Case Study: How an energy giant transformed its Collibra implementation with a Technical Product Owner

A global energy company, a long-time Collibra customer, faced persistent challenges in its Collibra implementation. Despite years of effort, assembling a fully functional implementation team proved difficult. While they had internal resources, these were not Collibra specialists, leading to inefficiencies and an inability to maximize the platform’s potential. Recognizing the need for a structured and technical approach, the company engaged Murdio to provide a seasoned Technical Product Owner to lead and streamline the implementation process.

The Challenge

Before Murdio’s involvement, the company faced several key issues:

• Lack of a structured implementation team: Internal efforts had been fragmented, with specialists focusing solely on their respective modules (Data Quality, Data Governance, Data Management, Reference Data) but lacking overall governance and adoption oversight.
• Limited technical expertise: The organization struggled with hiring technically proficient Collibra specialists. Many previous hires lacked the necessary experience, leading to prolonged onboarding periods and slow progress.
• Disorganized backlog management: The team had accumulated an extensive backlog of over 350 tasks, many outdated, without a clear process for prioritization and execution.
• Inefficient development and release management: The absence of a structured release cycle meant that development tasks were handled ad hoc, leading to inconsistencies, lack of visibility, and delays in feature delivery.
• Limited stakeholder engagement and oversight: The governance and adoption teams lacked alignment, making it difficult to ensure seamless execution across various business units.

The Solution

Murdio deployed an experienced Technical Product Owner to establish a structured approach to Collibra implementation and streamline processes across the organization. The key initiatives included:

1. Establishing Clear Roadmap and Release Management
   – Conducted stakeholder interviews to assess pain points and inefficiencies.
   – Introduced a structured release management framework aligned with company-wide development standards.
   – Implemented monthly sprints with clear deliverables, ensuring a steady flow of feature enhancements.
   – Introduced an incident and change request pipeline, distinguishing between support issues and development needs to enhance prioritization.
2. Enabling a High-Performance Technical Team
   – Assessed the technical skills of existing team members and recommended targeted resource optimization.
   – Transitioned inexperienced external individuals, who lacked deep technical expertise, to a more structured, performance-driven approach.
   – Ensured that development resources remained focused on technical enablement, to enable business content management.
   – Established clear task ownership within Jira, eliminating inefficiencies and miscommunication.
3. Standardizing Development & Quality Assurance Processes
   – Implemented clear documentation practices, ensuring that all development efforts were traceable.
   – Integrated rigorous testing cycles, accountability on the technical team and on the business team.
   – Created a centralized knowledge repository, ensuring that code, configurations, and way of working were preserved, easily accessible and understandable.
   – Worked closely with Collibra to align the roadmap with upcoming feature releases and technological advancements.

Results

The engagement led to measurable improvements in the company’s Collibra implementation:

• Streamlined backlog management, reducing unnecessary tasks by over 70% and prioritizing impactful initiatives.
• Increased sprint efficiency, with clearly defined deliverables ensuring more predictable and transparent progress.
• Successful migration of technical lineage from Harvester to Edge, reducing operational costs and improving automation.
• Optimized governance structures, ensuring that Data Domain Managers and adoption teams were properly aligned with technical teams.
• Improved team accountability, with structured oversight preventing inefficiencies and bottlenecks in development.
• Enhanced business engagement, ensuring that stakeholders could rely on a technically stable and well-managed Collibra environment.

Conclusion

By embedding a dedicated Collibra Product Owner, Murdio helped transform a previously disorganized implementation into a structured, high-functioning environment. The combination of technical leadership, process standardization, and governance alignment allowed the company to fully leverage Collibra’s capabilities, delivering a more efficient and scalable data governance framework.
Murdio’s Collibra Experts for Hire service continues to support global enterprises in optimizing their Collibra implementations, ensuring both technical excellence and strategic alignment with business needs.