Mesh Data Governance
Including just WTF is Federated Computational Governance
If you read Zhamak’s original blog post on data mesh, you will see that she only uses “governance” 4 times. That’s because for her at the time, governance was SO INGRAINED, it didn’t really need to be so called out. That is because on the software side, with the API and service mesh evolution, much of what we need in data was de facto standard.
But it’s not in data, it needs to be called out because SO MANY try to skip doing the necessary governance work. And governance has been a gate-keeper in so many organizations, it’s become a bit of a dirty word. But in data mesh, we can integrate as part of the development process and use it as a facilitator – a facilitator to quality, to value, to interoperability, to communication across boundaries, to faster time to market, to better safety and privacy, to so many things.
We CAN set ourselves up to succeed without getting governance perfect at the start. But we have to rethink how to do that. Hopefully these episodes will help you along that journey 🙂 And yes, there are a LOT of episodes so peruse show notes if you want to figure out which ones are going to be the most useful for you.
Potentially our favorite episode of all time 🙂 just a truly wonderful and enlightening conversation on how to do governance well in data mesh.
You can let governance block you in so many ways but constantly be asking what are you actually trying to achieve and measure risk/reward. At the enterprise/central data team level, minimize effort and risk but push the decisions – and the consequences for those decisions – down to the domains. You’ll enjoy this one!
To listen to the episode and/or see the full show notes, please go here. For the episode transcript, please see here.
While it may not seem like exactly a governance topic to start, SLA/SLO theory at an org-wide level is very crucial to understanding data governance. If you aren’t creating standard measurement of SLAs and SLOs – not standard levels, but just how things are measured – you are headed for some trouble.
Reliability engineering is also pretty crucial in general and we don’t know how to do it well in data so this is a great place to start.
To listen to the episode and/or see the full show notes, please go here. For the episode transcript, please see here.
While not specific to data mesh, Laura shares a lot of what she put in her book: advice and good practices for evolving your data governance to get to where it needs to be rather than trying to get it perfect up front. There is just too much pressure to get data governance perfect and it causes analysis paralysis and overly rigid approaches and structures. So get a little more flexible and you can get to where you need to be MUCH faster!
To listen to the episode and/or see the full show notes, please go here. For the episode transcript, please see here.
I go on a bit of a rant about how do we actually go about implementing data governance in data mesh. Where to start, what’s normal and okay to leave to later, how to evolve in a safe way, etc.
To listen to the episode and/or see the full show notes, please go here.
A fun and relaxed conversation about interoperability. One thing that resonates across all governance discussions it seems is that we have to let things evolve – be prepared for evolution AND especially leave room for it. If not, you will constantly be fighting a battle against past decisions instead of building upon them.
Look for ways to interoperate but don’t try to define it all upfront. It’s all a balance. And probably talk to your fellow implementers to get a sense of what they are doing too!
To listen to the episode and/or see the full show notes, please go here. For the episode transcript, please see here.
Nicola, AKA The Data Governance Coach shares her learnings from implementing data mesh with a client from scratch in a highly regulated industry. She discusses how to iterate towards better and get moving rather than getting stuck in analysis paralysis around governance.
To make it easier to start to break down the areas to focus on in governance, she recommends A) policy; B) processes and standards; and C) roles and responsibilities.
To listen to the episode and/or see the full show notes, please go here. For the episode transcript, please see here.
A great listen about having caution and bravery in doing your mesh data governance. We are still very early days and you will probably have to invent a lot of practices yourself. It’s always useful to get outside council but focus on making progress and balancing attention to what’s important for your org right now as you also plan for the future.
To listen to the episode and/or see the full show notes, please go here. For the episode transcript, please see here.
Two Thoughtworkers share their learnings from specifically working with Glovo as a client but also what other people from TWs are seeing in regards to doing data governance right in a data mesh implementation.
To listen to the episode and/or see the full show notes, please go here. For the episode transcript, please see here.
A good introduction to some concepts around governance, especially in the financial services space. Think about breaking up your governance into micro and macro and hand the micro decisions to the domains as much as possible while not losing sight of how those micro aspects – whether data products, input ports, interoperability standards, etc. – fit into the overall whole.
To listen to the episode and/or see the full show notes, please go here.
A great episode about how to add value as a governance team as you get people up to speed and as you add more policies. Make it about keeping people safe but accelerating and adding value to their work!
To listen to the episode and/or see the full show notes, please go here. For the episode transcript, please see here.
Karin is leading the data governance at a large data mesh implementation but as an outside consultant. Given this is her first big foray into governance, she’s been able to take a fresh look at it and come up with some unique perspective.
To listen to the episode and/or see the full show notes, please go here. For the episode transcript, please see here.
While maybe not strictly a governance topic to some, when you think about interoperability, taxonomies and tagging are pretty crucial aspects of how your data works together.
Potentiall pair with #184 Ontologies Don’t Have to Be Scary: An Ontology Primer w/ Neda Abolhassani
To listen to the episode and/or see the full show notes, please go here. For the episode transcript, please see here.
Mariana believe should start from why precisely are you doing data governance because it’s easy to get bogged down by all the different aspects like quality, security, etc.
While most people understand that most large organizations need to start federating their governance, it can be very scary to give up control and also there are so many places to focus. How can we get to good enough for now?
To listen to the episode and/or see the full show notes, please go here. For the episode transcript, please see here.
Data governance has a very strong value proposition – making a value adder instead of a gatekeeper – for data mesh. Learn from Lynn’s time leading the governance function embedded with a client implementing data mesh 🙂
To listen to the episode and/or see the full show notes, please go here. For the episode transcript, please see here.
Very fun and relaxed episode on a very specific topic: MDM or as they call it at Seagen, Core Data Management. It’s a topic that comes up constantly in data mesh conversations and there’s very little mesh specific content on it so this should be a great introduction.
To listen to the episode and/or see the full show notes, please go here. For the episode transcript, please see here.
K-Jams shares some great insights into actually implementing data privacy in a practical way. Her book Practical Data Privacy goes way deeper into it too 🙂
To listen to the episode and/or see the full show notes, please go here. For the episode transcript, please see here.
A really fun panel on privacy featuring Debra Farber – who has her own privacy focused podcast – speaking with kind of two ends of the spectrum. Katharine is focused pretty deeply on privacy and privacy tech while Samia understands the need specifically for her organization in the life sciences space.
To listen to the episode and/or see the full show notes, please go here. For the episode transcript, please see here.
This one is mostly about building out the actual platform aspects but there are some really interesting and unique thoughts on how to do access control via pure RBAC. It’s kinda wacky but it’s working well for them 🙂
To listen to the episode and/or see the full show notes, please go here. For the episode transcript, please see here.
For any interview or panel episode, there are show notes – that start to get quite extensive after episode 100 – as well as transcripts for any interview or panel episode past #46 and most past #32. You can see a list of all episodes and available transcripts here.
