The Grumpy Old IT Guy Guide to Data Stewardship: A Grumpy Handbook (Data Governance)

Let’s be honest.
No one grows up dreaming of becoming a Data Steward. It’s not glamorous. You’re not flying spaceships, launching
startups, or building the next viral app. You’re dealing with duplicates, missing values, inconsistent spellings, and
business users who think “the system is broken” when they entered a date in the wrong format.
But let me tell you something…
Data stewardship is one of the most essential jobs in any
organization.
Why? Because no amount of dashboards, cloud services, or
AI models will save a business that doesn’t know what its
data means—or whether it can trust it.
I’ve spent over 25 years in data: building databases,
cleaning up integration messes, writing code to catch bad
records before they spread, and yes—mentoring people like
you, the stewards stuck between business and IT, quietly
holding the whole thing together.
This book is for you.
It’s written for the real-world steward.
The one who didn’t get a job description. The one who has to figure it out as they go. The one who asks, “Why are there 7 different definitions of 'customer'?” and then actually tries to fix it. Inside these pages, you’ll find checklists, templates, dashboards, and all the tools I wish someone had handed me when I started. You’ll also find grumpy wisdom from years of trial and error, success and failure, all shaped into something practical, honest, and just a little bit sarcastic.