Where to apply data contracts

Data contracts can be applied in various places, but they’re most useful at the boundaries of ownership.

Whether that is a data or software team within the same group or business domain, or providing data for adjacent groups, teams and domains within the organisation, or even providing data externally.

More generally, they should be applied to every data product.

In fact, I’d say you don’t have a data product if it doesn’t have a data contract!

It’s the data contract that ensures the product can be built on with confidence.

Without that confidence, you can’t use the data to support a decision or to power an application. If you can’t do that, the data has no value.