Scenarios 06–10

Scenario 6 — First Assessment Too Broad

Situation: small team, eight weeks, detailed enterprise assessment across 40 business units.

Primary problem: unmanageable scope.
Leading KA: DMMA.
Supporting: Data Governance; Organizational Change.
Roles: assessment lead, sponsor, business leaders.
Best action: define meaningful localized/phased scope and state what remains out of scope.
Weaker response: assess everything; depth, evidence quality, timeliness, engagement suffer.
Changed fact: high-level enterprise scan + adequate resources + deliberately reduced depth can make enterprise scope reasonable.
Source: pp. 511–512.

Situation: Finance rates stewardship 4, Operations 2, IT 3; no supporting policies, roles, or decisions can be shown.

Primary problem: unreconciled opinion without proof.
Leading KA: DMMA.
Supporting: Data Governance; Metadata/knowledge management.
Roles: assessors, participants, governance.
Best action: gather artifacts/behavioral evidence, apply criteria, document preliminary rating, reconcile to consensus.
Weaker response: average to 3; creates a number without resolving actual practice.
Changed fact: methodology explicitly aggregates validated comparable evidence-supported survey inputs → aggregation can be valid.
Source: pp. 513–514.

Situation: managers claim excellent backups; no restore-test records can be found.

Primary problem: evidence gap.
Leading KA: DMMA.
Supporting: Data Storage & Operations.
Roles: assessors, DB operations, governance.
Best action: rate from available evidence and investigate artifacts/behavior rather than accepting claim.
Weaker response: trust self-report.
Changed fact: successful restore-test logs align with claim → rating can rise.
Source: pp. 510, 513–514.

Situation: executives receive a spreadsheet of maturity ratings with no business impact, risks, options, or targets.

Primary problem: interpretation/communication failure.
Leading KA: DMMA.
Supporting: Data Governance; strategy.
Roles: assessment team, executives.
Best action: executive briefing translating strengths/gaps into impacts, benefits, targets, initiatives, timelines.
Weaker response: raw table is not decision support.
Changed fact: working assessment team performing detailed analysis can appropriately use the detailed rating sheet.
Source: pp. 514–515.

Situation: Capability A is L1 with little strategic effect; Capability B is L2 but must reach L4 for regulation.

Primary problem: priority must reflect target capability/risk, not low score alone.
Leading KA: DMMA.
Supporting: Data Governance; risk/compliance.
Roles: executives, governance, roadmap owners.
Best action: prioritize the regulatory target-state gap.
Weaker response: lowest current score first.
Changed fact: if L1 capability becomes strategically critical/risk exposed, its priority rises.
Source: pp. 508–509, 514–515.