The area most organisations are weakest in is not data quality. It is documents and content — the shared drives and collaboration platforms with no classification, no retention schedule and no defensible disposal. It is also the one almost every data governance assessment leaves out.
This is a maturity assessment across all eleven DAMA knowledge areas, plus the ethics, AI and organisational change material that sits off the wheel. Sixty questions, scored as maturity rather than conformity, because a body of knowledge is not something an organisation can be certified against. It is free, it saves as you go, and you can stop and come back to it.
What this is
The current edition is the DAMA-DMBOK2 Revised Edition of 2024. It is a maintenance release — it did not change the framework or the scope. What it did change: unified terminology, revised context diagrams, data governance function in place of data governance programme, Data Integration Developer in place of Interface Developer, AI governance and ethics integrated throughout, and Currency added as a data quality dimension. DMBOK 3.0 is in development with a target window of April to July 2027 and no announced restructuring of the knowledge areas.
One count worth getting right: the DAMA wheel has eleven knowledge areas, with Data Governance at the centre. DMBOK2 has seventeen chapters, and material describing seventeen knowledge areas is conflating the two.
The background is elsewhere — data governance explained, building the framework, maturity models, quality dimensions, the steward role, lineage and MDM against governance. Come here when you want a score.
What it covers
60 questions, about 40 minutes.
| Section | Questions |
|---|---|
| Data governance and operating model | 8 |
| Architecture, modelling and design | 7 |
| Storage, operations and security | 9 |
| Integration, documents and content | 7 |
| Reference and master data | 5 |
| Warehousing, business intelligence and metadata | 8 |
| Data quality | 8 |
| Ethics, AI, people and maturity | 8 |
How the scoring works
| Status | Weight | Means |
|---|---|---|
| Not started | 0% | No policy, process or activity exists |
| Planned | 25% | Agreed and scheduled, nothing in place yet |
| Partially implemented | 50% | In place for part of the scope, or applied inconsistently |
| Implemented, not evidenced | 75% | Operating as intended, but you could not prove it today |
| Implemented and evidenced | 100% | Operating as intended, with records someone could sample |
| Not applicable | — | A justified exclusion, removed from the score |
The test an assessor really applies to governance is not whether a policy exists but who decided, on what mandate, and what happened when somebody disagreed. A governance body that has never blocked a delivery project has not been tested.
Free score, or the full report
The assessment and your overall score are free. The full report is a one-off $39 and gives you every question with your status and notes, the score broken down by section, a prioritised gap list, and the documents from the Data Governance Toolkit that close each gap — as a PDF and a working Excel file.
How long does it take?
About 40 minutes. Data quality and the cross-cutting section carry the most questions, and the storage, operations and security section takes the longest to evidence.
What to do with your score
Below 40% — start with ownership. Named accountable owners for the domains that matter, and a governance body with a written mandate, are what make everything else in this assessment answerable.
40–70% — the usual shape. Governance, security and quality are underway; metadata coverage, unstructured content and master data consumption are where the score drops.
Above 70% — check whether mastered data is actually consumed downstream, and what the catalogue coverage percentage really is. A well-built hub nobody uses and a catalogue covering a fifth of the estate both score badly here, and should.
Frequently asked questions
Is this assessment really free?
Yes. All 60 questions, the breakdown by knowledge area and your overall score cost nothing. The $39 report is optional.
Can an organisation be certified to DMBOK?
No. DAMA certifies individuals through CDMP. There is no organisational certification against the DMBOK, which is why this is framed as maturity.
How does this relate to DCAM or CMMI?
DCAM from the EDM Association and the data domains of CMMI V3.0 are both scored assessment products with their own licensing. This assessment uses the DAMA knowledge areas as its structure and a single six-point scale, so it is a starting picture rather than a substitute for either.
Should I wait for DMBOK 3.0?
No. The target window is April to July 2027 and DAMA has announced no restructuring of the knowledge areas, so a maturity picture taken now will still map onto it.
Can I use this for a client?
Yes. Run one assessment per client organisation.
What happens to my answers?
They are stored against your account so you can come back to them, and they are never shared. You can delete them at any time.