Governance · 8 min read · May 2026
Data governance consulting: what we actually do in the first 90 days
By Thinklytics Partners, Governance Practice
Past the policy-document theater and into the work that actually changes how data flows through your company. The 90-day plan, the deliverables, and the political conversations that determine whether governance sticks.
Frequently asked questions
What does the first 90 days of a data governance engagement look like?
Week 1 to 3: certify the top 12 to 18 metrics with named owners. Week 4 to 8: build the metric layer in your existing tool (dbt, Looker, Power BI semantic model, Tableau). Week 9 to 12: turn off the legacy duplicate definitions and run an executive readout. Most clients see the metric arguments end in week 6.
Why focus on metric definitions before policies in the first 90 days?
Policies without certified metrics are paper. The reason governance projects stall is they start by writing a policy nobody can apply. Once a metric has a definition and an owner, the policies write themselves because the source of truth already exists to point at.
Who needs to be involved in the first 90 days of data governance?
One executive sponsor (typically CFO or COO), one metric owner per top metric (finance lead for revenue, RevOps for pipeline, etc.), and one technical lead. Six people total in most engagements. More than that and the project becomes a committee.
How is this different from a 12-month data governance roadmap?
A 12-month roadmap covers data classification, access policies, catalog, lineage, retention, privacy. The first 90 days only covers metric certification because that is the failure mode killing 80 percent of governance projects. The rest of the roadmap works once metrics are settled.
What is the typical fee for a 90-day data governance engagement?
$180,000 to $320,000 depending on the number of metrics in scope and the source-system mess. Senior-led delivery, fixed scope, fixed fee. Read our Kaiser Permanente metric governance case study for what the deliverable looks like on a Fortune 100 health system.
What is the most common pushback in the first 90 days?
Different teams claim ownership of the same metric. The resolution is always the same: name the executive sponsor and have them pick. Governance fails when there is no escalation path. With one, the metric arguments resolve in days, not quarters.
What happens after the first 90 days?
Three options. One: hand the certified metric layer to the internal team and exit. Two: extend into a 6-month build of the governance plane (policies, catalog, lineage on top of the metric layer). Three: convert to an ongoing managed model where Thinklytics co-runs governance. We don't require option two or three.
Does this work for international organizations?
Yes, with one nuance. Multi-region governance has to handle data residency rules per region, which adds 2 to 4 weeks to the foundation work. The metric certification process is otherwise identical; the governance plane gets a region-aware policy layer on top.