Data Governance

Happy Friday!

Today I write about how we maintain the ability to provide local value through data in large organisations.

Hey, hope you’ve had a good start to June! I’m writing to you from Antwerp, Belgium, where I’m attending the inaugural Data Mesh Live conference. Looking forward to a great day of learning and meeting before my talk later.

Hey! Thanks for opening another edition of my newsletter. This week I talk about the investment you need to make when decentralising.

Traditionally, data governance has been implemented using people and processes.

You establish standards. Define roles. Encourage greater communication.

I see data contracts as being at the cross-section of best practices.

In particular, they take the best practices from APIs, Data Governance, and Platform Engineering.

How many times has your data team gone from centralised, to decentralised, and back to centralised again?

A question I received on a LinkedIn post about change management with data contracts asked (lightly edited for clarity):

Data governance initiatives often deliver a set of rules for people to follow when they create and manage data.

I came across this Steve Jobs quote recently:

It’s not the tools that you have faith in — tools are just tools. They work, or they don’t work. It’s people you have faith in or not.