Tableau Governance
This content is part of Tableau Blueprint—a maturity framework allowing you to zoom in and improve how your organization uses data to drive impact. To begin your journey, take our assessment(Link opens in a new window).
Perhaps the most important principle when adopting modern analytics is that self-service and governance are not at odds with each other. Self-service is designed to enable everyone to ask and answer their own questions using trusted data to make informed business decisions. Governance is central to Tableau Blueprint because it is governance that makes self-service possible. As the anchor point, governance will drive all decisions as the project team develops agility, proficiency, and community across the organization.
Governance is the combination of controls, roles, and repeatable processes that creates trust and confidence in data and analytics. Both IT and business stakeholders on the project team are responsible for defining data and content governance together. In a successful self-service environment, the appropriate levels of governance create accountability and enable, rather than restrict, access to trusted content for users in your organization. Governance is a spectrum—different kinds of data and content require different kinds of governance. It’s not a one-time effort because skills and expectations will evolve. Periodically evaluating governance processes will allow you to evolve and delegate more responsibilities as new analytical skills and use cases develop.
In Tableau, you govern two things: data and content. Data governance ensures the accuracy of the data driving your users’ decisions. Content governance helps business users to quickly and confidently find, share, and use relevant workbooks and data sources. From soft guidelines to firm boundaries for the usage of Tableau, organizations need to design their own governance models that comply with their internal policies and procedures, and overall business needs. Your organization’s governance models should encompass both data and content management processes and the people who understand and comply with the established controls. Like other Tableau platform management activities, an agile, iterative approach is needed to adapt to new business requirements as user adoption and engagement increase across your organization.
Defining the right balance of flexibility and control means you will realize the benefits of both self-service and governance:
- Providing the right data to the right audience in a secure, governed operational model.
- Building the foundation for every data-driven decision.
- Establishing trust and confidence to drive business value.
- Documenting processes in a transparent, understandable, and easily-referenceable format.
- Contributing to the stability of the platform and reducing the proliferation of duplicate data and content with governed workflows.
This document walks through the Modern Analytics Workflow and the role of governance within it, the areas of governance you need to consider, and finally defining governance models. Use this guide with the Data and Content Governance tab of the Tableau Blueprint Planner, which contains key considerations for each governance area, to assist with establishing your organization’s standards, processes, and policies to securely manage data and content.