My Second Book Is Out: Data Strategy
Two ideas, nine years, and a method you can run on Monday.
When I wrote my first book, I was nervous. It was my first time putting a method in front of the world, so I kept it careful and left a lot unsaid.
My second book, Data Strategy: Uplift Data Governance While Retiring Tech Debt, is different. It is more complete, and I have written it the way I actually think, without hesitation. It is now available in paperback, PDF and audiobook, and in French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and German.
What changed in between
Two things changed between the first book and this one.
First, I spent some time writing fiction and finished four chapters of a novel, which I have parked for later. It taught me how to tell a story, and I think that shows in this book.
Second, a Victorian council ran my method end to end, across sixteen core systems, with real data and real obligations. That gave me something no amount of writing can: the confidence of having seen it work.
The thinking behind the book goes back further. Since 2017, when I named it Data View House, I have been researching data governance and writing it up in my blogs, one question at a time. I practised the method from my first book in the field, tested my ideas against real systems and real laws, and built my own framework for data governance. This book brings nine years of that work together in one place.
Two ideas at the core
1. The gap between data and the business
Too many data programs start with the data: a framework, a tool, a maturity target. A business does not exist to run the best data governance. It needs the governance that helps it meet its objectives.
So the order matters. Business objectives come first, then the business strategy that serves them, then the IT strategy, then the data strategy, and only then data governance. I call this the order of significance, and I keep it fixed in every engagement.
When a business unit is not heard, its needs do not go away. They pile up quietly in workarounds, side spreadsheets and decisions nobody wrote down. I call that silent debt, the quieter cousin of tech debt, and like tech debt, nobody sees it until the day it has to be paid.
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2. Capability, not dependency
Most governance rests on one or two people who hold the knowledge in their heads and the authority in their relationships. When they leave, the governance leaves with them.
A maturity score is a photograph of one morning. Governance is a muscle the organisation has to keep using, with named roles, registers that stay current, and a committee that actually decides. The test I now put to all my work is simple:
If the person who holds it leaves, does it survive?
If the answer is yes, you have built governance. If the answer is no, you have built a dependency.
Three parts
The book is organised in three parts.
Part I, Why Governance Fails. A country can have every rule written down and still be ungoverned. So can your data. Part I looks at what governing a nation teaches us about governing data, and what fills the gap when no rule decides.
Part II, Doing It. The discovery a legacy retirement already needs hands you the foundations of data governance: owners, roles, the law behind every record, registers, and a committee that actually decides.
Part III, Making It Travel. One discovery answers a security standard, a privacy law and a records authority at once. Then it crosses borders, and it outlasts the consultant who built it.
Every chapter ends with something you can do on Monday.
You do not have to wait for a retirement
The book starts from the discovery a legacy system retirement already needs, because that is the moment someone else is paying for it. But the same discovery works on the systems you are running today. A retirement simply makes it the easiest moment to fund.
Get the book
Buy direct from Technics Publications: https://technicspub.com/data-strategy/
Use code TP25 for 25% off print and PDF.
Thank you to Steve Hoberman and Technics Publications for backing both my books.
