Most institutions do not have a data problem.
They have a trust problem wearing a data costume. There is plenty of data — what is missing is confidence that the number is right, that everyone means the same thing by it, and that a decision made on it holds up to a regulator, a board member, or an angry customer.
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By the end of it, you’ll be able to:
- Score all eight dimensions with the business in the room — and find out where you disagree
- Name one system of record for every entity that matters, and treat the rest as copies
- Run a quality loop that profiles, tests, and fixes at the source instead of patching the report
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The order matters, and almost everyone gets it backwards.
Score where you really are, build a foundation people trust, fix quality, agree on definitions, govern it so you can move fast, then put AI to work and measure what it returns. Skip to the AI part before the foundation is solid and you will ship confident, expensive mistakes — faster, and with a better-looking dashboard on top of them.
You already know which parts are shaky.
Bought the platform first, on the theory that the platform would settle the definitions
Watched two teams bring different numbers for the same metric and spend the meeting arguing about whose report was wrong
Shipped a dashboard nobody opens, because nobody believes the number on it
None of that is a tooling failure. A report is not wrong when two teams disagree — the definitions are. And a foundation is not a shopping list of tools; it is four decisions made on purpose, in an order that most roadmaps invert.
Here’s what you walk away able to do.
Score all eight dimensions with the business in the room — and find out where you disagree
from “Score your data reality”Name one system of record for every entity that matters, and treat the rest as copies
from “Build a foundation people can trust”Run a quality loop that profiles, tests, and fixes at the source instead of patching the report
from “Fix data quality”Certify the handful of metrics that cause the most fights, and end the argument for good
from “Agree on definitions”Know which model-risk regime you are actually under, now that SR 11-7 is gone
from “Govern it so you can move fast”You can put this off, sure — but a month from now you’ll still be doing it the slow way, wishing you’d started today.
We made this because we kept watching it not click.
Smart people — people who are genuinely good at their jobs — were paying for these tools and using maybe a tenth of what they could do. Not because they weren’t trying, but because nobody ever showed them the part that actually matters. So we sat down and wrote that part: the moves that work, the ones we’d hand a friend who asked. No filler, no hype, just the stuff we’d actually use ourselves.
A checklist, not a lecture.
Eight dimensions you score with the business in the room, so the disagreement itself becomes the finding. The six data-quality dimensions and the loop that keeps them healthy. Lake, warehouse or lakehouse, chosen for the right reason. What model governance actually requires now that SR 11-7 has been replaced. A one-page checklist and a first year, sequenced.
An eight-dimension scorecard you fill in with the business in the room
Lake, warehouse or lakehouse — and how to pick for the right reason
The six data-quality dimensions, and the loop that keeps them healthy
What model governance requires now that SR 11-7 has been replaced
A one-page checklist and a sequenced first year
Three steps, and you’re reading in under a minute.
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Try one thing this week
Open it, pick one idea that fits your week, and actually use it. One small win is all it takes to see what this thing can do.
A few fair questions.
Am I actually going to be able to do this?
Yes. It’s written to be followed, not admired. Every step is plain, the examples are copy-paste, and a simple first-week plan means you’re never staring at a blank screen wondering what’s next.
Will it actually show me how to set it up?
That’s the whole point. It walks you through the setup step by step and assumes nothing — so you end up with the thing actually working, not just a list of features you read about.
Is it too advanced, or too basic, for me?
It meets you where you are. New to this? It starts from the ground and builds up. Already comfortable? Skip ahead to the prompts and plays — they’ll still earn their keep.
How much time is this going to take?
You can read it in an afternoon, and you’ll have something working the same week. It’s built around small wins, not a giant course you start and never finish.
Is this just hype, or does it actually work?
No fluff. It’s the real moves — the exact prompts, the steps, and the mistakes to skip — from people who use this stuff every day, not a recap of a press release.
Is it really free? What’s the catch?
Genuinely free. We ask for your first name and email so we can send it (and the next one when it’s ready). No card, no catch, and one click to unsubscribe.
Find out where you actually stand.
Grab the Field Guide, run the eight-dimension scorecard with the business in the room, and let the two lowest scores write your next two quarters. Free, takes a second, yours to keep.
Get the Field Guide — free.
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An independent guide from Prometheus Consulting, for data & analytics leaders, and the executive funding the work. Snapshot as of June 2026; tools move fast — check against current docs. Unofficial: product names are trademarks of their respective owners, none of whom reviewed or endorsed this guide.