Over the past 15 years there has been a move away from the concept of "corporate" data management to a model based on "project" data management. Project data management has usually meant doing only what was necessary to get a project over-the-line without a lot of consideration of the longer-term needs of the enterprise. This model is driven by project cost, resources, and deliverable timeframes.

The result of this change has been a loss of standardised processes to ensure that data is managed as a corporate asset. We may now have situations where projects have done their own thing and there is no centralised data dictionary explaining our data and perhaps little knowledge of where our data actually is. We may also have data with an unknown level of quality even though this drives customer interactions and business insight. Recreating corporate data management and governance processes is a daunting task. We also have to work in a new world where there is little desire for expensive documentation and bureaucratic processes.

However, the DAMA Body of Knowledge gives us a way of:
Explaining the data management and governance problem to senior management,
prioritising problem areas,
identifying roles and accountability,
progressively building capability,
re-using existing material, and
approaching the problem using industry standards.