Where do you draw the lines between business and IT ownership of data and information?
I get many questions on this subject and it often turns into almost a religious debate. Let's throw some structure into it. Here's a decision-to-raw-data stack.
1. Decisions
2. Strategy
3. Policies
4. Objectives (e.g. clear understanding of what is driving revenue performance)
5. Goals (e.g. achieve x% income growth)
6. Calculated metrics (any combination, variation of the standard metrics or KPIs)
7. KPIs (e.g. profitability, liquidity, shareholders value)
8. KPMs (e.g. enterprise value, trailing/forward price/earnings)
9. Metrics (e.g. fee income growth %, non fee income growth %)
10. Dimensions (e.g. customers, customer segments, products, time, region)
11. Pre-calculated attributes (standard, cross enterprise metrics, KPIs and KPMs)
12. Pre-built aggregates (used to speed up reports and queries)
13. Analytical data (DW, DM)
14. Operational data (ERP, CRM, financials, HR)
Obviously, it's never a clear cut, binary decision, but in my humble opinion
- 1-6 should emphasize business ownership
- 10-14 should emphasize IT ownership
- 7-9 is where it gets murky, and ownership depends on whether metric/KPI/KPM is 1) standard and fixed, 2) fluid and changes frequently, 3) different by product, line of business, region