The Case for Moving to a Domain-Centric Data Architecture
This weblog, initially printed in September 2021, was up to date in July 2023.
Domain-centric knowledge structure may be very intently associated to knowledge mesh and shares two of knowledge mesh’s pillars: domain-oriented design and federated knowledge governance. For organizations which can be enthusiastic about the advantages of knowledge mesh however don’t need to absolutely commit but, a domain-centric knowledge structure is a stable step in the direction of knowledge mesh.
As somebody whose function at Domo is to present knowledge governance recommendation to the corporate’s largest clients, I’ve numerous conversations with IT leaders about knowledge lakes—and the way Domo’s knowledge expertise platform is able to querying knowledge straight from these lakes.
At its core, a knowledge lake is a centralized repository that shops all of a corporation’s knowledge. That knowledge might be structured and unstructured however is often separated by area and managed by a crew usually referred to as the Middle of Excellence (CoE).
Organizations I converse with have a tendency to have already got a knowledge lake—whether or not it’s within the cloud or on-premise—or are wanting to implement one in Domo.
The causes for wanting to implement a knowledge lake are easy: they value lower than knowledge warehouses or databases, are a lot extra accessible to your entire group than knowledge that lives in silos, and are best for machine studying.
What’s extra, knowledge lakes make it simple to govern and safe knowledge in addition to preserve knowledge requirements (as a result of that knowledge sits in only one location).
For these causes and others, knowledge lakes are fashionable investments. However as most knowledge practitioners know, some knowledge lakes have downsides.
For one, the trouble and price to preserve a knowledge lake and its respective knowledge pipeline can enhance over time. For an additional, as a knowledge lake grows in complexity, it will possibly lead to delays that influence innovation.
Higher BI with knowledge lakes
To get higher, extra related BI insights from their knowledge lakes, many Domo clients are shifting in the direction of a domain-centric knowledge structure, whose key part entails taking knowledge stewardship duties away from the CoE (or IT) and giving them to the enterprise items (BUs) themselves.
This enables the CoE to focus on the administration, upkeep, and innovation of the information platform whereas permitting BUs—whether or not or not it’s the HR division, the finance division, or another a part of the group—to captain their very own ships, so to converse.
How do you open this door? There are three keys:
1—Empower BUs to personal and take care of their very own knowledge
The simplest way to empower a BU is by beginning with a person inside the unit that has a good understanding of their group’s knowledge in addition to the topic space, is aware of how to correctly use the information platform, and is snug answering colleagues’ questions on knowledge or the platform.
When you’ve recognized who that particular person is (or may very well be), getting your entire crew up to pace turns into a lot simpler. In my expertise, the very best technique for instructing customers a new platform is thru knowledge implementation. Decide a valid-but-not-too-complex use case, then run the use case implementation from finish to finish.
2—Guarantee that sufficient communication channels exist between the CoE and BUs
That is particularly necessary once you get to the purpose the place varied entities are managing content material creation and its use.
A technique to create sturdy communication channels is to kind a governance council that a) consists of the knowledge leads from every of the BUs in addition to a consultant of the CoE, and b) is prepared and in a position to meet commonly to talk about platform utilization, classes realized, and alternatives for knowledge sharing.
One other method is to construct a customized touchdown web page on the information platform that has current information, any guidelines or rules round knowledge use, and hyperlinks to coaching in order that your BUs can preserve their talent ranges excessive.
3—Create a platform-monitoring dashboard
While you get to the stage the place you’ve obtained a lot of new content material creators in your knowledge platform, you have to to preserve monitor of them to guarantee they’re enjoying by the principles. That’s the place a platform-monitoring dashboard can actually assist.
In Domo, the first supply of this knowledge would be the Exercise Log dataset. This dataset has a checklist of all actions taken by any consumer. Some nice visualizations you can begin with in your monitoring dashboard are:
- Coverage adherence charges. When implementing Domo, resolve on a naming conference and stick to it. A visualization exhibiting naming conference non-compliance will assist guarantee customers adhere to this coverage.
- Data exporting. Customers who export knowledge out of your knowledge platform symbolize a safety threat—and will imply that customers don’t perceive the platform properly sufficient and are exporting the information for use in different knowledge instruments comparable to Excel. A visualization of this can be utilized to establish these safety dangers and areas the place extra coaching is required.
- Content material creation benchmarking. A visualization evaluating every BU’s content material creation charges may very well be used to establish the place coaching or adoption is inadequate in a BU. This info may lead to extra coaching workshops to enhance adoption.
What a domain-centric strategy can do for you
With a domain-centric strategy to knowledge structure, a complete new world inside the fashionable BI universe opens, as a result of the next takes place:
- Effort is distributed to the right elements of your group. As your group’s BI implementation continues to develop and unfold throughout the enterprise, the trouble to preserve current content material—as properly as create new content material—will enhance. Enabling and empowering BUs to construct their personal content material can drastically scale back the want for the CoE to be concerned in that concern, which in flip allows the CoE to concentrate on ensuring that elevated utilization doesn’t develop into a downside space.
- Content material possession is assigned to those that comprehend it finest. A website-centric knowledge structure permits the finance crew to management finance knowledge, the HR crew to management HR knowledge, and so forth. Not solely does this scale back the safety threat of the CoE accessing doubtlessly delicate info, but it surely additionally ensures that the customers who’re most acquainted with the topic are those managing, creating, and validating knowledge.
- Shadow IT turns into much less of a chance. One thing I’ve seen with clients who prohibit content material creation to solely a few customers is the event of shadow IT, which is a time period for when techniques are deployed by departments to work across the shortcomings of techniques they’ve been requested to use. Shadow IT operations can seem benign. Nonetheless, as they develop, not solely do governance dangers comparable to safety and regulatory non-compliance, lack of auditability, and knowledge leaks additionally develop, however the potential of a political battle between the brand new shadow IT and the present knowledge platform turns into extra seemingly, which may negatively have an effect on firm tradition.
To be taught extra about implementing a domain-centric knowledge structure as a part of your fashionable BI technique, contact me at karl.altern@domo.com. Or, if you might be already a Domo buyer, contact your account government (AE) or buyer success supervisor (CSM).
NOTE: This submit was written with steering from TreeHive Technique principal Donald Farmer, an internationally revered speaker, author, and marketing consultant who served as moderator of Domo’s ‘Curiosity: Do Data Differently’ video sequence in 2020.