Implementing Microsoft Purview is a critical step toward establishing robust data governance to enable better visibility and control over organizational data assets. However, due to the broad business areas and volume of stakeholders involved, many Purview projects are undersold in scope, leading to missed deadlines, unforeseen costs, and underwhelming adoption. Sullexis recommends a ‘start-small’ approach to implementing Purview, designed to help organizations accurately scope and deploy it from the start, building out domains one by one, eating this elephant one bite at a time!
In this blog series, we will cover five key questions that will help to enable a well-planned and successful Purview deployment.
1. What Are Your Corporate Objectives for Implementing Purview?
Before diving into Purview, it’s important to define what your corporate objectives are. For example, are you implementing Purview to support regulatory compliance, improved reporting, or streamlined data governance? Your objectives will dictate which Purview features to focus on.
If regulatory compliance (e.g., SOX, HIPAA, GDPR) is the goal, then you would want to make sure your implementation and team are going to prioritize Purview’s sensitive data classification, access policies, and audit trails. For data governance and cataloging, Purview’s data catalog should be developed to establish a single source of truth for enterprise data assets, ensuring proper classification, and metadata management. If focusing on data products and ownership, assign clear ownership of data assets within Purview to enable better data accessibility, accuracy, and usability across business functions. Bottom line, start with your end goals and work backwards.
With so many features available, it’s critical to align your Purview implementation planning with your corporate objectives to ensure that the implementation is focused, measurable, and valuable to your organization.
2. Does Your Governance Plan Extend to the Domain and Subdomain Levels?
Effective data governance extends beyond high-level domains and requires careful consideration of subdomains and the people responsible for managing them. Understanding this hierarchy is key to ensuring proper oversight and adoption. Most organizations have defined data domains (e.g., Finance, HR, Sales), but subdomains (e.g., Payroll within HR, Accounts Payable within Finance) add depth and complexity.
Let’s say you have a handle on your sub domains (good for you!). Have you thought about the impact on your organization when you start to build out governance working groups for each subdomain? We typically see working groups of anywhere from 5 to 20 people for each subdomain so if you have 30 subdomains you have A LOT of people who are going to have a hand in your governance strategy.
Without clear domain and subdomain governance, Purview implementations often face scope creep, budget overruns, and poor adoption. By defining your governance structure at the domain and subdomain levels, you set the foundation for a scalable and structured Purview implementation.
* This visual shows the just how expansive a company’s domains and subdomains can be
And remember, one bite at a time! We’ll cover this further below, but we strongly suggest starting with a single subdomain rather than trying to tackle everything at once.
3. Do You Understand the Data Assets Associated with Your Domains and Subdomains?
Every domain and subdomain have associated data assets, including datasets, tables, reports, and dashboards. These assets are the foundation of data products within Purview, which provide a way to discover, understand, and consume data across an organization. Without proper visibility into these assets, organizations risk duplication of datasets across multiple departments, redundant reports that provide conflicting insights, and inconsistencies in metadata, tagging, and data definitions. These issues can lead to inefficiencies, misaligned decision-making, and compliance risks. Properly cataloging these assets within Purview is crucial for governance and usability.
Conducting a discovery process to identify all relevant data assets to determine how they map to domains and subdomains is necessary when implementing Purview and should be included in an implementation plan. By cataloging, classifying, and tagging these assets, Purview makes data more discoverable and accessible across the enterprise. However, simply registering assets is not enough. Organizations need to take a strategic approach by aligning data assets with domains and subdomains, ensuring they contribute to meaningful data products.
For example, an HR subdomain might define a Workforce Analytics Data Product that standardizes and validates headcount, attrition, and hiring data. This provides data consistency and facilitates automated quality monitoring.
As we’ve mentioned throughout this blog series, don’t panic at the thought of going through this exercise for every single subdomain. Start small with a single subdomain, learn, and move on.
* This visual shows how data assets are associated to data products in Purview. Depending on where your organization is in their technical journey, semantic models may be mapped into data products as well
4. Do You Have a Plan to Roll Out and Scale Purview?
Now that we’ve discussed the volume of people and data assets associated to a single subdomain, you should be starting to understand just how big of an undertaking a Purview implementation can be. Sullexis recommends a phased approach to Purview implementations to avoid overwhelming internal teams and facilitate proper adoption.
Start small by implementing Purview in a single subdomain first, refining governance structures, data catalogs, and classifications before expanding. You can take lessons learned from the first subdomain’s initial rollout to gradually expand Purview’s implementation across multiple subdomains. This provides a template for moving forward from a people, process, cost, and timeline perspective.
By prioritizing key governance functionalities in the beginning stages, Purview will be structured for future scalability, including advanced features such as lineage tracking and security. Additionally, organizations can mitigate risks, control costs, and drive long-term success through an iterative implementation plan. At Sullexis, we say that Data Governance and Purview are not a destination to get to but ongoing journeys for the business—making it essential to have a well-structured plan for both implementation and long-term scalability.
5. Do You Have the Right Team to Support Implementation?
This is arguably the most important answer to consider before kicking off a Purview implementation. A successful Purview deployment relies on having the right team in place, which typically includes governance teams, business stakeholders, Purview specialists, data experts, program managers, and IT support. Given the rapid enhancement of Purview capabilities and its extensive range of features, it is essential to have skilled experts deeply familiar with Purview’s functionalities to tailor its capabilities to your organization’s specific needs and requirements.
Once a Purview specialist is in place, Sullexis recommends a “train-the-trainer” approach to empower your governance teams and business stakeholders. This method makes sure teams are well-equipped to manage Purview effectively, fostering long-term self-sufficiency
Final Thoughts
Scoping a Microsoft Purview implementation correctly is essential for achieving your corporate data governance objectives. Thoughtful planning will help you avoid common pitfalls such as budget overruns, scope creep, and poor adoption, ensuring that Purview becomes a valuable and sustainable component of your enterprise data strategy.
If you’re ready to implement Purview but need help getting things organized, Sullexis can help. As a trusted Microsoft partner with direct access to Purview product managers and private preview teams, Sullexis can help customize your strategy to secure a successful deployment.
Sullexis offers a Purview readiness assessment as well as sample implementation plans, detailed domain and sub-domain samples and even proven organizational models for adopting Data Governance to help you evaluate your organization’s preparedness and outline a clear path forward. Reach out today to begin your journey with Microsoft Purview.