Avo

I’m just going to say it: You can’t successfully scale your data without optimizing for domain ownership. And you can’t optimize domain ownership without centralized governance. Without these things, you end up with unhappy embedded data practitioners, an unhappy central data team, crappy data, and slow moving teams. Domain teams will inevitably take control of their own data. Domains need data. If they can’t get it fast enough through the system you have, they will go rogue and run on their own. Maybe they’ll only go so far as to start sending the events they need into the analytics tools you already have. But we also see time and time again that they simply buy their own tool and start using that fully on their own. In other words: Domains will inevitably generate the data they need. It's just a question of whether there’s a system in place that's well designed enough that they are willing to work within it. When you reach data at scale, you will need to start governing it. But when you start governing it, domain teams tend to bypass the system because the system is too heavy. But there is a way to create a system that fulfills the data mesh principles for event based data in a way that empowers domain ownership data. This is how we turn the risk of domain ownership into a huge opportunity. I just wrote a piece about the risk of domain ownership, why it’s inevitable that domains take ownership of their data, and what we need to do about it to prevent it from becoming a wild west. Please check it out (link in comments) and let me know why I’m wrong (or right?). Good luck, have fun solving data problems!

All I want for Christmas is the data mesh principles applied to event-based data governance. The “data mesh principles” and “data contracts” are two frameworks that many of us already follow without calling them that. I’m sorry to potentially trigger your allergy to marketing speak, as both of those concepts did for me. What I hated about the data mesh principles framework when it went viral is exactly the same as what I’ve grown to love about it; it’s a new way to frame what we’ve all already been trying to work towards for ages. At first I thought: “Oh great, yet another consultant-y framework that’s easy to throw around without getting the nitty gritty of the actual work”—and we all know the devil is in the details. When I finally got over myself I realized it’s frankly a great framing of exactly what I’ve personally been preaching since the early days of product analytics. The data mesh principles (data as a product, self-serve data, central governance, domain ownership) may seem lofty and even insurmountable. But applying them to event-based data governance is absolutely key to leveraging great data, building products on top of it and making decisions from it. I’ve already talked and written a ton about two of the data mesh principles, data as a product and self-serve analytics. It’s time to let the other two shine. Let me state the case for 💥central governance with domain-driven ownership 💥for event based data. I’m writing a three piece series on this and the first post part’s out (check out link in comments 👇), about how data governance at scale is absolutely bonkers levels of broken but can be addressed with data mesh and data contracts. Hear me out and tell me how I’m wrong 🙏 Other than that, let’s go go go. Good luck, have fun.