Organizations need a practical method to assess and activate the value of their data. Forrester’s Data Valuation Framework provides a way to evaluate data assets across utility, quality, usability, risk, and cost and prioritize those that can deliver measurable business outcomes. This impact-first approach helps teams focus investment where it drives ROI, productize high-value data, and build repeatable evidence of value through increasing reuse, efficiency, and revenue contribution over time.

Data governance plays a critical role in enabling organizations to use data safely and effectively across analytics and AI initiatives. Successful data governance requires coordination across a cross‑functional group of stakeholders, including business, data, technology, and risk leaders, who collectively make decisions about data ownership, quality, access, and reuse. To help organizations assemble and guide this governance team, Forrester has created the Data Governance RACI Matrix. This tool helps organizations understand which leaders should be responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed for core data governance activities across the data governance responsibility areas.

Most organizations struggle to connect data investments to measurable business outcomes and sustain trust and funding for data programs. Treating data as a product and adopting a clear data product taxonomy makes data attributable, governable, and reusable across analytics, AI, and digital use cases. This report introduces Forrester’s data product taxonomy of components, composables, and consumables and explains how to use it to clarify ownership and governance while making data value measurable and repeatable.

Governance leaders have a narrow window to prove that governance fuels progress, not bureaucracy. Whether you’re building from zero or evolving a partial setup, the first 90 days are crucial to define a mandate, activate ownership, and deliver visible wins. This report provides a sequenced plan for data and AI governance leaders to stand up lightweight governance services, embed guardrails in delivery, and measure impact. It draws on Forrester’s governance model to help you productize governance, activate metadata, and align to outcomes like privacy, compliance, and self-service.

A mature data governance function is key to an organization’s ability to foster trust, transparency, and agility in its data practices. Forrester’s Data Governance Maturity Assessment helps organizations gauge how effectively they embed data governance in executive leadership, business outcomes, operating model, technology, and enablement, and helps identify areas where companies can improve to drive value in their data governance practices.

Data governance platforms are evolving into strategic enablers of data productization, AI readiness, and federated models, but execution gaps persist. Buyers prioritize integration flexibility over feature breadth, and usability remains a barrier to business adoption. While capabilities like lineage and glossary metadata are foundational, success hinges on vendor partnership, modular implementation, and a clear path to maturity. This report distills insights from 29 enterprise implementations to help you evaluate platforms, avoid common pitfalls, and ask the right questions to ensure long-term value.

2026 will be marked by environmental sustainability resistance — and a counterbalance with activism rising in response. Companies that treat environmental sustainability programs as public relations or marketing exercises will be increasingly exposed as they back away from bold promises made just a few short years ago. But programs that are rooted in long-term vision and can show ROI will boost their companies’ investor confidence, regulatory standing, and competitive relevance. This report details Forrester’s predictions for environmental sustainability in 2026.

Data product managers have the crucial role of understanding the business’s largest challenges and creating data products with technical teams that solve these challenges. This report outlines the key roles and responsibilities, education, background experience, skills, behaviors, and knowledge that a candidate needs to succeed as a data product manager. Organizations should use this report to help them create their next data product manager job posting.

The path from raw data to actionable insights is fraught with challenges, including legal liabilities and underutilization. Data products, supported by versatile marketplace platforms, offer a solution — turning data into an asset for revenue generation, industry collaboration, and regulatory compliance.

The Forrester Wave™: Data Governance Solutions, Q3 2025, is now live. This evaluation captures a market in transition — one where governance is no longer just about control and compliance but about enabling trust, agility, and AI readiness at scale.