Daily data contracts tips

I had a really great chat last week with Juan and Tim on their Catalog & Cocktails podcast.

I liked this post by Robert Sahlin and Johan Gunnarsson about how they used BigQueryML to create alerts for cost anomalies.

I get asked a lot if there is, or should be, a standard for a data contract.

I wrote yesterday about how by promoting autonomy we can empower the users of our data platform to take on more ownership and responsibility.

You might have noticed how I keep using the word autonomy in these posts, for example a couple of days ago when writing about a contract-based data platform and yesterday when linking to lessons from BlaBlaCar.

This blog post from BlaBlaCar shares some great lessons - not just for implementing data mesh, but for any platform team looking to build products for internal stakeholders.

Data contracts are powerful enough you can build a data platform based on them - one that is more flexible and more effective than those we built before and promotes a more decentralised approach to data.

A few years ago I, as tech lead of a data platform team, proposed that we shouldn’t be building a data platform.

It’s a reality that when working in a team that supports or enables others you’ll have a steady stream of people asking you questions.

No matter what we do, when working at sufficient scale and/or sufficient speed it’s inevitable that things will go wrong.