Project DG: data governance for ERP, migration and AI programmes

The discipline that stops a live programme discovering its data too late: the critical data profiled before migration scope is priced, source-to-target mapping and cleanse decisions governed with an owner and a log, rehearsal pass criteria set as measured thresholds, cutover workarounds logged with expiry dates, and day two ownership designed before go-live.

Project DG runs from £22,000 + VAT per month with Intelance for three to nine months, fixed in writing and matched to the programme. For context, data problems found at rehearsal are priced at panic rates on the critical path, and UK data governance day rates run £1,100 to £2,400 per day, which is how unmanaged data workstreams quietly outspend governed ones.

Not in your interest. The integrator maps your data to their template, prices cleanse effort on optimism and calls the gaps business decisions, because their incentive is the timeline. Project DG works alongside the integrator on your side of the table: they run the loads, we govern what they load and what passes rehearsal.

Six failure modes account for most of it: data profiled for the first time at rehearsal, a mapping nobody on the client side owns, cleanse effort assumed rather than measured, no decision on who owns the data in the new system, cutover workarounds becoming permanent, and day two governance that was never anyone’s deliverable.

Measured thresholds per data set, agreed before the rehearsal: completeness, match and reconciliation rates the load must achieve to pass. Failures are triaged from evidence and the go or no-go decision is earned from the numbers, which makes the decision defensible.

Before the integrator contract is signed, ideally: the programme screen prices the data risk while the migration scope can still be negotiated from evidence. Mid-programme rescue is common and works, but every month of delay moves the same problems closer to the critical path, where they cost more.

Same programme, different risk. ProjectEA is the architecture side: the target set, vendor designs challenged and day two protected across the whole estate. Project DG is the data workstream: profiling, mapping, rehearsals and day two data ownership. Large programmes often run both, scoped separately.

Day two is a deliverable in its own right: the data verified against the baseline, workarounds closed or dated, and the running routine handed to named owners. Where the estate needs ongoing leadership, the Virtual CDO from £7,500 + VAT per month or the Data Governance Office from £9,500 + VAT per month carries it from there.