Why this matters
BI Developers often sit between business teams who depend on numbers and data teams who produce them. Clear metric Owners and Stewards prevent disputes, reduce dashboard drift, and speed up incident response.
- End metric arguments: one accountable business Owner decides the definition.
- Faster fixes: a named Steward runs checks and coordinates technical changes.
- Cleaner catalogs: every key metric has documented contacts, SLAs, and change control.
- Better trust: stakeholders know who to ask and what to expect.
Concept explained simply
Think of a metric as a product.
- Metric Owner (business): Accountable for what the metric means and how it is used. Approves the definition, thresholds, and changes.
- Metric Steward (technical/process): Responsible for the health of the metric’s data pipeline, documentation, quality checks, and incident coordination.
Use a RACI outline:
- Responsible: Steward (implements checks, updates docs, coordinates engineers)
- Accountable: Owner (final decision on meaning and change approval)
- Consulted: Producers (source system owners), Finance/Legal if needed
- Informed: Consumers (teams using the metric)
Mental model
- Two-key rule: Definition changes need two keys: business approval (Owner) + technical feasibility/sign-off (Steward).
- Data supply chain: Owner sets the spec; Steward guarantees quality from source to dashboard.
Worked examples
Example 1: Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)
- Owner: Head of Finance (accountable for revenue definition)
- Steward: Analytics Engineering Lead (maintains models and tests)
- RACI: A=Finance; R=Analytics Eng; C=Billing System Team; I=Exec, Sales Ops
- SLA: Daily refresh by 07:00; data quality alert within 30 minutes of failure
- Change control: Owner approval required for plan upgrades/downgrades logic
Why this works
Finance owns revenue truth for reporting and audit. Analytics Eng ensures pipeline fidelity. Billing team is consulted due to source logic.
Example 2: On-Time Delivery Rate
- Owner: VP of Operations
- Steward: Data Platform PM or BI Steward (Ops domain)
- RACI: A=Ops; R=BI Steward; C=Logistics provider, Warehouse system owner; I=Customer Success
- SLA: Hourly refresh during business hours; incident comms within 1 hour
- Change control: Any change to delivery-window rules requires Owner approval
Notes
Ops owns the target and thresholds; Steward maintains data checks (late shipments, timezone parsing, carrier status).
Example 3: Net Promoter Score (NPS)
- Owner: Head of Customer Experience
- Steward: BI Developer responsible for survey ingestion and calculation
- RACI: A=Customer Experience; R=BI Dev; C=Marketing Ops (survey tool), Legal (privacy); I=Product
- SLA: Weekly aggregation by Monday 10:00; PII masked in downstream tables
- Change control: Any change to survey recoding rules requires Owner approval
Notes
Owner aligns NPS with strategy; Steward enforces privacy and consistent computation.
How to assign owners and stewards in your org
Step 1 — Inventory critical metrics
List top 10 business-critical metrics used by execs or cross-functional teams.
Step 2 — Map producer/consumer landscape
Identify source systems and main consumer teams.
Step 3 — Propose Owner + Steward
Owner = business leader accountable for outcome. Steward = technical lead/BI steward closest to the pipeline.
Step 4 — 30-min decision meeting
Confirm RACI, SLAs, and change control. Keep it short; decide with the right people in the room.
Step 5 — Document a one-page Metric Charter
Publish in your catalog with contacts, SLA, formula, and version history.
Step 6 — Operationalize
Add ownership metadata to dashboards, set alerts to notify Owner + Steward, and add an incident runbook.
Templates you can copy
Metric Charter (1-page)
- Metric name + business question
- Definition/formula + scope (filters, time window)
- Owner (name, role, contact)
- Steward (name, role, contact)
- Producers (source system owners) / Consumers (teams)
- Refresh cadence + SLA (availability, latency)
- Data quality checks (freshness, completeness, validity)
- Change control (approval path, rollout plan, deprecation policy)
- Related dashboards/assets + glossary terms
- Version history (date, change, approver)
Lightweight RACI snippet
- Accountable (A): Metric Owner
- Responsible (R): Metric Steward
- Consulted (C): Source system owner(s), Finance/Legal if applicable
- Informed (I): Primary consumers
Exercises
Complete the exercise below. You can check a sample solution afterwards.
Exercise 1 — Assign Owners and Stewards
Your company sells a SaaS product and ships hardware add-ons. For each metric, assign an Owner and a Steward, set an SLA, and write a one-line change control rule.
- Gross Margin
- On-Time Delivery Rate
- Weekly Active Users (WAU)
Deliverable: three mini charters (can be bullet lists). Aim for clarity over detail.
Tip: picking the Owner
Choose the business leader accountable for the outcome tied to the metric (Finance for margin, Ops for delivery, Product/GM for WAU).
Tip: picking the Steward
Choose the person/team closest to the data pipeline who can implement checks and coordinate engineers (BI Dev, Analytics Eng, Data PM).
Checklist before you move on
- Each metric has exactly one Owner (accountable).
- Each metric has at least one named Steward (responsible).
- RACI roles are clear for producers/consumers.
- Each metric has a refresh cadence and an SLA.
- Change control states who approves and how to roll out.
Common mistakes and self-check
- Making a committee the Owner. Fix: pick one accountable person.
- Letting the Steward decide business meaning. Fix: Owner approves meaning; Steward advises feasibility.
- No SLA. Fix: define refresh time, latency, and comms window.
- Orphan metrics with no contacts. Fix: unowned metrics get archived or assigned.
- Hidden changes. Fix: require Owner approval and versioned rollouts.
- Not updating ownership after org changes. Fix: review quarterly.
Self-check questions
- Who approves changing the churn formula?
- Who gets paged on data freshness failure?
- Where is the SLA documented?
- Which teams must be informed before rollout?
Practical projects
- Catalog top 10 metrics: add Owner, Steward, SLA, and change control for each.
- Dashboard labels: display Owner/Steward and last refreshed time on all executive dashboards.
- Incident runbook: create a 1-page playbook with triage steps and notification templates.
Mini challenge
Sales claims they own “Customer Churn Rate” because it impacts pipeline; Customer Success claims ownership due to renewals. Who is the Owner? Who is the Steward? State your rationale and one change control rule.
Hint
Owner is the leader directly accountable for churn outcomes (often Customer Success). Steward is the team maintaining the churn data pipeline (BI/Analytics).
Who this is for
- BI Developers and Analytics Engineers setting up reliable metrics.
- Data PMs formalizing metric governance.
- Team leads who depend on trusted KPIs.
Prerequisites
- Basic understanding of your company’s core KPIs.
- Awareness of source systems and data pipelines feeding dashboards.
- Comfort reading metric definitions and simple SQL or BI calculations.
Learning path
- 1) Define and document metric Owners and Stewards for top metrics.
- 2) Add SLAs, data quality checks, and incident runbooks.
- 3) Implement change control with versioned rollouts.
- 4) Review ownership quarterly and after org changes.
Next steps
- Choose three high-impact metrics and publish their charters today.
- Enable alerts to notify both Owner and Steward on freshness failures.
- Plan a 30-minute review with stakeholders next week.
Progress and test
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