This moment in time might be described as Big Data’s awkward phase. Even as software companies hustle to churn out better governance and wrangling tools, data is still too vast and varied for most companies to get their arms around. But eventually the grunt work will be behind us, and we can focus on developing sparkly analytics tools that read customers’ minds, right? Well, not so fast.

Gene Leganza, VP and principal analyst at Forrester Research, Inc., says his view on the Chief Data Officer (CDO) role changed over time. He used to think since many data officers started in remedial roles, and now they are in more of a management and maintenance role, the logical next step might be for them to become chief analytics officers and just focus on the glitzy, customer-facing applications.

But given a choice, who would want to do boring data management anymore? Everyone with data skills would opt for straight analytics, and, “Two years down the line, you’ll have data management issues,” he explained to Stu Miniman (@stu) and Paul Gillin (@pgillin) of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, during the MIT CDOIQ Symposium.

The solution is to “let the overriding interest in analytics and the cool stuff subsidize the lack of interest in the uncool stuff of data management and keep those together,” he said.

Try before you buy

Leganza also spoke about the challenges of selling enterprises on data at this stage. “No one’s going to change their behavior unless they see what’s in it for them.”

He spoke about the irony of the truism that you have to work with the whole enterprise in mind and not get holed up in a silo. The problem is with the role of data still uncertain “you do have to work with very specific use cases to show value,” he said.

Leganza argued that starting small with pilot programs to prove value and then scaling out enterprise-wide might be the best strategy for data scientists and CDOs.

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of the MIT CDOIQ Symposium.

Photo by SiliconANGLE