Use Cases
Navigate real-world governance scenarios mapped to your adopted policies, procedures, and glossary terms. Find the right guidance for any operational situation.
What Are Use Cases?
Use Cases are real-world operational scenarios mapped to the governance statements, procedures, and glossary terms that apply from your own adopted policies. Instead of reading through dozens of policy documents to figure out what rules matter for a specific situation, Use Cases give your team a guided, actionable path through the governance landscape.
Each use case represents something your organization actually does — onboarding a vendor, deploying a production database, responding to a data breach, launching an AI model — and connects it directly to the specific obligations, prohibitions, and recommended practices from your governance program.
Why Use Cases Matter
Governance policies are only effective when people follow them. The challenge is that most policies are written as abstract statements, disconnected from the daily work they're meant to govern. A data engineer deploying a new pipeline shouldn't need to read an entire data governance manual to understand what applies to their work.
Use Cases solve this by flipping the perspective:
- Traditional approach: Start with the policy document, search for what's relevant
- Use Case approach: Start with what you're doing, see exactly which rules apply
This makes governance navigable. Your team can look up a scenario they're about to undertake and immediately see which statements they need to comply with, which procedures to follow, and which terms they should understand.
How Use Cases Work
Scenario-Based Navigation
Each use case describes a concrete operational scenario with:
- Title — A clear, action-oriented name (e.g., "Onboard a New Vendor")
- Category — The governance domain it falls under (Data Management, Privacy, Security, etc.)
- Description — Context about when this scenario arises and why governance matters
- Linked Statements — The specific governance statements from your adopted policies that apply, grouped by relevance (critical, relevant, informational)
Connected to Your Policies
Use Cases don't reference abstract best practices — they reference your adopted governance statements. When you adopt statements from the Dictiva Library into your workspace, those statements become available for linking to use cases. This means the guidance is always specific to your organization's governance posture, not generic advice.
Relevance Levels
Each linked statement is tagged with a relevance level:
- Critical — Must be followed for this scenario. Non-compliance creates direct risk
- Relevant — Applies to this scenario and should be considered during execution
- Informational — Provides useful context but doesn't impose direct requirements
Categories
Use Cases are organized by governance domain:
| Category | Examples |
|---|---|
| Data Management | Build a data product, deploy a production database, decommission a legacy system |
| Risk Management | Onboard a new vendor, conduct an internal audit, assess third-party risk |
| Enterprise Governance | Establish a data sharing agreement, migrate to the cloud, onboard a new employee |
| Privacy | Process a customer data request (DSAR), implement data retention, conduct a privacy impact assessment |
| Security | Respond to a data breach, implement access controls, manage encryption keys |
| AI Governance | Launch an AI/ML model, audit algorithmic decisions, establish AI ethics review |
| Compliance | Prepare for a regulatory audit, implement a compliance monitoring program |
Getting Started
- Browse Use Cases — Visit the Use Cases Library to explore available scenarios
- Select a Scenario — Choose a use case relevant to your current work
- Review Linked Statements — See which governance obligations apply, grouped by relevance
- Follow the Guidance — Use the linked statements as a checklist for your operational work
Current Status
Use Cases is under active development. The initial set of use cases covers common scenarios across 7 governance domains. We are expanding coverage based on user feedback and industry demand.
If you have specific scenarios you'd like to see covered, contact our support team with your requirements.