I'm Always Looking to Reduce Our Technical Debt — Walgreens Boots Alliance Sr Director of Data Governance and Architecture

(US & Canada) Mike Jennings, Senior Director of Data Governance and Architecture at Walgreens Boots Alliance, speaks with David Zhao, Managing Director at Coda Strategy, in a video interview about his background and role at Walgreens, the changes in technology over the last 30 years, and the ways a CDO can deliver with limited resources.

Jennings has been in the data management and analytics space for over 30 years. His background is in telecommunications, insurance, government contracting, and engineering. He has been with Walgreens for a little over 12 years and a majority of his time is focused on data architecture and governance in the enterprise data analytics and AI group.

Speaking of technological changes over the past 30 years, Jennings notes that while new technologies like cloud computing, big data, and AI have continually emerged, enhancing how they serve customers, and improving business performance, some core activities have remained consistent. For instance, moving to the cloud essentially involves the same processes as before, but with the difference that now someone else manages and maintains the infrastructure.

When asked about the top data initiatives at Walgreens, Jennings lists the following:

On the data architecture side:

1. Developing, maintaining, and enhancing data standards, data guidelines, and data architecture reviews.

2. Evaluating new technologies and new architectures, and where they fit in and can be used.

He says that he is always looking for ways to reduce the organization’s overall technical debt and remove data redundancies in the environment to improve overall performance and save costs.

Additionally, on the data management side, Jennings’ role includes:

1. Maintaining data owners and stewards throughout the organization to ensure good data management practices and activities are being performed for maintaining different data data governance policies, and standard operating procedures for things like external data sharing.

2. Addressing data issues that come up from the data strategy executive console.

3. Expanding the coverage and usage of the enterprise data catalog to have a better view of data, understand the data lineage, understand impact analysis, and provide users and business areas with new ways of looking at the data and discovering information.

4. Addressing different laws and regulatory needs like state privacy laws on the pharmacy and healthcare side and PHI and other regulatory rules around healthcare and healthcare data.

Sharing advice for CDOs and CIOs trying to achieve their data vision and deliver data strategy goals, Jennings recommends setting up the data governing console to leverage people who know the data, use it all the time, and know the issues around it.

Involving the SMEs and getting their insights is one way to expand to a federated data governance approach and expand the data governance presence. On the data architecture side, Jennings mentions having an architecture community of solution and technical architects spread out across the enterprise. Leveraging them and getting their input can ensure that the best policies, architectures, and guidelines are put in place based on practices and activities in the enterprise.

Involving experts on business challenges

1. Their expertise and insights can be brought back to be shared across the community.

2. Issues common across the enterprise can be solved commonly and the solutions can be implemented across the board in some cases.

In conclusion, Jennings emphasizes that understanding data governance and data architecture isn't something any single individual can fully grasp on their own; it requires collective effort and collaboration within a community.

CDO Magazine appreciates Mike Jennings for sharing his insights with our global data community.