The Data & Beyond Dispatch #1: An introduction
In the very first issue of The Data & Beyond Dispatch, let’s dive into the world of Chief Data Offices, Data Evangelists, and Data Leaders to understand the impact of valuing data assets. We will then explore how to empower your data team to adopt a business-oriented mindset by identifying critical data assets; how to bolster data governance initiatives with trust; and infuse excitement, challenge, and effectiveness into your data engineers’ roles with a fresh title (Data Platform Engineer).”
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Summary: This podcast dives into the multifaceted role of a Chief Data Officer, featuring the insightful experiences of Davin Crowly-Street, the CDO at National Highway. The conversation spans the responsibilities of a CDO, the art of unleashing value from data assets, and the cultivation of digital and data leadership skills for long-term asset management. Davin also shares his journey in captivating business leaders and empowering data leaders, all while leveraging the existing culture at National Highway.
Why I Find It Fascinating: Davin’s take on data as a tangible asset is eye-opening. He highlights the importance of recognizing data as an asset, just like land or machinery, and valuing it accordingly. Notably, National Highway valued their data at a staggering £60 billion, making it 50% of their road assets’ value and ten times their technology assets. This valuation sparked a significant investment in data. What’s even more intriguing is how their leadership team projected a £1 billion ROI over a decade from this £60 billion data asset. As a result, they invested £3 million in a comprehensive, year-long company-wide effort involving around 300 participants to craft a data strategy and long-term plan for the organization. This podcast provides a fresh perspective on data’s pivotal role in modern business.
2. How to identify your business-critical data
Summary:
The article emphasizes the significance of identifying business-critical data for data teams, particularly in situations where teams are frequently overwhelmed by BAU (Business as Usual) requests, urgent fixes, multiple dashboards, and a multitude of stakeholders to manage. It then presents a framework for pinpointing such critical data.
The process begins with identifying business-critical dashboards based on their relevance to critical use cases, usage frequency, and the involvement of C-suite executives. The article then guides readers in identifying business-critical data models, which often have numerous downstream dependencies. Lastly, it provides practical tips for data teams to automate the task of labeling data criticality and how to take action based on the importance of their dashboards and models.
Why I Like It:
While this is a “How-to” article, it refrains from immediately delving into tools and tips. Instead, it first focuses on the “why” and effectively shifts the data team’s mindset to be more business-oriented. The application of the 80/20 principle is evident in the way the author articulates the problem statement and its resolution. The author demonstrates clear expertise in implementing a data labeling system, and the visualization of data model dependencies is particularly insightful and definitely a nice touch to a visual learner like me. In sum, the article brings valuable insights to life and communicates them efficiently.
3. Building Trust in Data with Data Governance
Summary:
In this episode titled “Building Trust in Data with Data Governance” from the DataFramed series, Laurent Dresse, Data Governance Evangelist and Director of Professional Services at DataGalaxy, shares invaluable insights on the significance of data governance. He emphasizes the crucial role of cultural changes in the successful implementation of data governance and offers practical advice for organizations at various maturity levels to enhance data quality and trust.
Why I like it:
The more I dive deeper into the world of creating valuable data products, the more I realize the criticality of building and maintaining data trust. Laurent’s experiences and insights serve as a refreshing reminder of this significance. His message is clear: data quality is a collective responsibility. Along the data value chain, it’s essential for everyone to understand how their work impacts data quality. A practical tip he offers is to start documenting KPIs in a data catalog, even in a simple Excel spreadsheet. It’s a small step, but it can make a big difference down the line.
For organizations committed to lasting change, having a Chief Data Officer (CDO) is crucial. The CDO plays a pivotal role in driving cultural shifts and marshaling resources to improve data quality.
This podcast is a real gem for data leaders. It offers credible insights on the importance of data governance and practical advice on getting started.
4. The Data Engineer is dead, long live the (Data) Platform Engineer
Summary:
The author begins with a critical insight: Data infrastructure is the bedrock of AI success. However, data engineers face challenges like data quality, repetitive tasks, and scalability.
To address these, industry experts propose redistributing data responsibilities to Analytics Engineers and Data Producers. Meanwhile, a groundbreaking shift emerges — the rise of Platform Engineers, redefining data engineering.
Platform Engineers focus on creating a self-serve data platform for cross-functional teams. This transition streamlines scalability and user experience, ushering in a new era of data excellence.
Why I like it:
The article features insightful diagrams illustrating the transition from traditional data engineer to platform engineer. These visuals vividly depict how this shift empowers data engineers to deliver increased value through more challenging and innovative tasks.
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Hi there, if you are reading this, the chance is you care about data. You think there are invaluable values that can be extracted from data, and you are eager to find the best strategies, implementation practices, and tools to extract as much value as possible out of your organization’s (or your own) data assets.
If that is true, then you are in the right place. Keep reading on, as The Data & Beyond Dispatch is a newsletter focused on the difficult, but rewarding mission of making the best use of data — the hottest commodity for every company in the 21st century.
Every edition will bring you insightful content from the Data community, which is curated and summarised to give you fresh, well-articulated, and practical perspectives on the mission, visions, strategies, and toolboxes of truly effective Data Leaders.
If you enjoy the newsletter, subscribe and stay tuned for more
