The Importance of Ownership
Establishing which organizational units are responsible for which file shares, folders, sites, and drives is vital for almost all transformation workflows: from data migration and organizational restructuring to acquisitions and divestitures.
A clear data owner gives a speaking partner and allows for these individuals’ knowledge and authority to be integrated into key steps. This brings critical benefits, chief among which is a reduced risk of user and operational disruption. Preventing disruption and stoppage can have major implications for the organization and the individuals involved. There benefits here alone warrant the investment necessary to identify and involve data owners.
Organizations that identify and involve data owners in transformation processes realize critical benefits:
- Reduced risk of user and operational disruption
- Risk remediation plans are made more concrete and effective
- Timelines are shortened and made more predictable
- Senior managers are better able to monitor and guide initiatives
- User-experience is improved
- Organizational culture moves towards data stewardship and risk awareness
Data Migration
Data migration is an example of a workflow where data owner involvement is critical. Planning and executing data migration without the insight that data owners have into the target data gives rise to operational risk and project inefficiency. Data owners contribute vital information about optimal time for cut-over, they can identify redundant data that can be removed rather than migrated, they perform critical actions to prepare data for migration (changing links in Excel files, removing encryption, etc). Involving data owners in key migration steps reduces risk and ensures a more predictable migration schedule.
Proven Methods to Identify Owners
Northern helps customers identify owners of files shares and SharePoint Sites in four primary ways, listed below in order of complexity:
Each file has an owner and information about those owners can usually be collected from Active Directory, e.g., Department membership. By summarizing the numbers of files owned by each Department in a file share or SharePoint Site it is possible to establish the most likely owner of that share/site.
Reservations:
- File ownership can have been lost in past migrations (many files now owned by system or administrative accounts).
- Shares/Sites accumulate abandoned files; owned by users who are no longer with the organization, which can confuse this picture of ownership.
By only considering files created within the last 30, 60, or 90 days, it is possible to get a clearer picture of which group/Department is using the share/site today. This group is likely to be the most immediately effected by work done on the site/share.
Reservations:
- Some shares/sites have very low levels of activity making this method less practical.
A review and listing of which (non-administrative) groups have write access to the share/site can give a clear picture of ownership. Assuming permissions are configured following the principle of least privilege, it should be clear in most cases which group is intended to have responsibility for each share/site.
Reservations:
- Permissions configurations don’t always follow the principle of least privilege.
Combination of File Ownership, Permissions Configuration, and metrics about the content of the share/site. By combining information about the group(s) that own files in a target share/site with information about permissions, and information about the content of the shares/site, it is possible to clarify ownership in situations where one approach on its own does not give a definitive answer; a central group publishing pdf reference material into a share used primarily by another group, for example.
Reservations:
- Synthesizing the different pieces of information (permissions, ownership, object content) can be time consuming, making this advanced method impractical for large numbers of shares.
By beginning with the most straightforward method (approach #1) and only moving to more advanced methods if necessary, customers can quickly build a picture of ownership for the majority of cases; a picture they can use to establish communications while they, in parallel, use more advanced methods to identify ownership in the remaining cases.
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Contact Northern to find out more about how the team has helped other customers identify data owners and those customers have used that information to reduce risk, shorten project timelines, and improve overall efficiency.