Getting started on the Data Strategy

• Formalising the business case

• Business Acumen to analyse the business

• Data state analysis

• Define sponsor and audience concerns

Why do we need a business case for the strategy? What form could that business case take?

We are going to need to position our strategy in the context of the business and what is currently going on.

Data teams are often federated and so we need to be clear on what areas of the business are in scope.

Our strategy project proposals need to consider the state of the current Data Capability to identify key early opportunities for the strategy. What can we promise to guide on as part of the strategy delivery?

Define the sponsoring and the key audience for the data strategy and their concerns. These concerns are something we must address within the strategy to succeed.

The section summary.

• Define what we mean by strategy

• Define four key pillars for data strategy

• Introduce the concept of data maturity assessment

Define strategy in business terms.

Introduces the structure of a data strategy that we will follow in the remainder of the course.

Data maturity can be a useful assessment for the data strategy. What is data maturity and how can this assessment be done?

The strategy needs to drive change and we do that through a plan.

Section  summary.

• What is Business Strategy

• Where to Find Business Strategy

• Key Areas to Drive Data Strategy

• Capturing Business Strategy within Data Strategy

Defining the data strategy using Mintzberg's definitions. Identifying the key components of the business strategy.

The business strategy is not always obvious in the organisation. So where do we find this content?

We know what the business strategy is and have found all the parts we need. Now how will it drive data and what are the key pieces to pick on.

In this lecture, we are going to talk about how we will capture the business strategy. It is really a briefing for the assignment coming up when I am going to ask you to capture this information for your organisation or an organisation you know well.

Organisation structures are often not helpful for driving the Data Strategy. The structure aggregates functions in a way that hides areas of importance for data alignment. They also include duplication of functions which may make it hard to explain alignment. It is therefore useful to translate the business into a business capability model.

Section Summary

• Catalogue of the Data Assets

• Catalogue of the Data Analytics

• Catalogue of the Data Science

• Identify future opportunities

In this lecture, we define a data asset and identify data assets for a catalogue. The quality of data assets is analysed in order to identify concerns to be addressed in our strategic plan.

This lecture focuses on the data analytics or insights that drive the business. Cataloguing these and analysing them for concerns and opportunities to be addressed in the strategic plan.

This lecture defines what we mean but data science and how they fit alongside analytics.  Cataloguing of the insights and analysis of the quality of these is undertaken.

Summary of this section.

• Identify Data Platforms

• Identify Data Engineering Approach

• Identify Data Operations Approach

This lecture defines data platforms. Catalogue the data platforms in place now along with what is required for the data's future journey, at a strategic level.

The lecture focuses on the ability of the organisation to build and extend data platforms.

This lecture focuses on the ability of the organisation to operate the data platforms. Providing security, availability and recovery of these platforms.

Section summary.

• Identify data ownership strategy

• Identify data controls

• Identify how data in curated

This lecture looks at the data ownership role and responsibility and the role of the steward that supports the owner.

This lecture considers the high-level controls that data governance enforces.

This lecture introduces the concept of data curation, to make the data approachable and usable to the business.

Section summary.

• Organisation structure to support data strategy

• Data culture

• Data skills

This lecture looks at the operations for organising data professionals within the organisation.

The organisation's culture must embrace data to reach the level of a data-driven organisation. This lecture considers some of the steps needed to evolve the organisation's culture.

This lecture looks at skills for the general employees as well as the data professional roles.

Section summary.

• Build the strategic plan

• Define the presentation need for each stakeholder group

• Presentation Structure

This lecture looks at how to convert the objectives into a strategic plan.

This lecture looks at how the sponsor and stakeholders' concerns are addressed by the strategy. Aligning the strategy to the business culture for its audience.

This lecture looks at a basic structure for the strategy presentation though this must be adapted to address the stakeholders' concerns.

Section summary

• Congratulate ourselves on completing the course

• Recap of the course

• What next in the data journey

This lecture takes a brief recap of the course.

This lecture looks at four further areas of learning you may be interested in:

1. Principles

2. Performance reporting

3. Cloud

4. Infonomics

Thank you for taking the course and please leave a positive review to help others find the course.