Chapter 12 — Roles and accountability
Lesson map
Lesson 12 published. Map, example, EX034.
flowchart TD
N0["Learning outcomes"]
N1["12.1 Common roles"]
N2["12.2 Assigning roles"]
N3["12.3 Accountability"]
N4["12.4 Making roles real"]
N0 --> N1 --> N2 --> N3 --> N4
N4 --> EX["Worked example"]
EX --> Q["Exercise EX034"]
Logical drawing
flowchart LR
N0["Learning outcomes"]
N1["12.1 Common roles"]
N2["12.2 Assigning roles"]
N3["12.3 Accountability"]
N4["12.4 Making roles real"]
N0 --> N1 --> N2 --> N3 --> N4 --> Q["EX034"]
[Learning outcomes]
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v
[12.1 Common roles]
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v
[12.2 Assigning roles]
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v
[12.3 Accountability]
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v
[12.4 Making roles real]
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v
[Worked example] --> [Exercise EX034]
Learning outcomes
You will (1) describe common governance roles; (2) assign roles at Harbourline; (3) explain accountability in practice.
12.1 Common roles
Amara studies common roles. A governance council or group sets priorities and resolves disputes. Data owners are senior staff accountable for particular data domains, such as loyalty or products. Data stewards look after definitions, quality rules and issues day to day. Data custodians, often in IT, operate systems and apply controls. Users follow rules and report problems. She notes that names differ between organisations, but the separation of deciding, maintaining and operating appears in most models. Amara draws the roles as a simple chart.
12.2 Assigning roles
Amara drafts role assignments for Harbourline. The marketing director owns loyalty data, the commercial director owns product data and the finance director owns sales figures. A steward in each team maintains definitions and handles issues. IT custodians run the systems. The operations director chairs the governance group. Each assignment includes a short statement of decisions the role may take. She discusses the draft with each person and adjusts it where responsibilities overlap or were missing from her first version. All owners sign.
12.3 Accountability
Accountability means being answerable for outcomes, including explaining failures and fixing them. Amara asks the marketing director what he would do if loyalty data were found inaccurate. He says he would ask IT to fix it. She explains that as owner he should approve the quality rules, ensure his team follows them and decide priorities for fixes. Accountability cannot be delegated to IT, though tasks can. He agrees after seeing examples from other organisations. He signs his ownership statement later that week.
12.4 Making roles real
Roles on paper often fail. Amara recommends adding governance duties to job descriptions, allocating steward time in work plans and reporting on role performance at governance group meetings. She also suggests a short induction for new owners and stewards. Dr. Lindqvist notes that the most common failure is naming stewards without giving them time, so they treat governance as an extra task that disappears when other work becomes busy. The operations director adds steward time to next year's work plans for each team, with hours agreed.
Worked example
Amara describes council, owner, steward, custodian and user roles, assigns them at Harbourline, clarifies that the marketing director remains accountable for loyalty data and recommends job descriptions and steward time.
Synthetic case. Roles are synthetic.
Errors and limits
Naming stewards without allocating time makes the role disappear.
Exercises
- EX034 — Loyalty owner. Who owns loyalty data? Rubric: 3 = the marketing director;; 2 = partly correct;; 1 = other;; 0 = none.
- EX035 — Delegation limit. What cannot be delegated to IT? Rubric: 3 = accountability;; 2 = partly correct;; 1 = tasks;; 0 = none.
- EX036 — Common failure. What is the most common role failure? Rubric: 3 = naming stewards without giving them time;; 2 = partly correct;; 1 = vague;; 0 = none.
Continue studying — lesson 12 (chapter 12 of 40)
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