Established model
Data mesh
Zhamak Dehghani · 2019
Treat data as a product owned by the domain that produces it, with governance agreed centrally and applied locally.
Its place in the frameworkData Core›Data Governance
What it does
A reaction to the central data team that becomes a queue. Ownership moves to the domains that understand the data, each publishing it as a product with defined quality and an interface, while standards are set once and enforced everywhere. Governance becomes federated rather than either centralised or absent.
- Reach for it when
- When a central data function is the bottleneck, and when nobody can say who is responsible for a given dataset being right.
- Where it stops
- It presupposes domains mature enough to own a product, and it is routinely adopted as a technology purchase rather than the organisational change it actually is.
Zhamak Dehghani, “How to Move Beyond a Monolithic Data Lake to a Distributed Data Mesh”, martinfowler.com, 2019.
Why it sits at Data Governance
Who owns which data, what each term means, who may see what, and how long any of it is kept — the unglamorous rules that make everything else in this core possible.
A model is only useful when you reach for it at the right moment. This one answers a question that arises here — so it is filed here, and nowhere else. These are the working areas it serves:
- OwnershipData-stewardship practice: accountability located with whoever understands what the data means rather than with whoever stores it.
- Definitions and lineageData-dictionary and lineage practice in information management, and the reconciliation problem it exists to prevent.
- AccessAccess-control principles of least privilege and purpose limitation, applied to internal data as well as personal data.
- Retention and deletionStorage-limitation principles in data protection, and records-management practice on scheduled disposal.
What it touches elsewhere
Nothing in a business is decided on its own. A conclusion reached with this model at Data Governance lands in these other cores, whether or not anyone follows it there.
- Data CollectionWhat may be collected and how long it may be kept are governance questions applied at the point of capture.
- Business CoreData-protection obligations are compliance obligations and belong in the same register.
- Business AssetsAccumulated data is an intangible asset and belongs on the schedule with a replacement cost.
- ReportingShared definitions are what make self-service reporting produce consistent answers.
Filed at the same place
These answer questions that arise at Data Governance too. Where they disagree with this one, the disagreement is the useful part.
- The data management body of knowledgeA complete map of the disciplines data management consists of, and how governance sits at the centre of them.
Elsewhere in Data Core
These are other people’s models, named here so you can go to the source and use them properly. The Omnigoal is not affiliated with their authors and is not endorsed by them; nothing of theirs is reproduced here — no canvas, no diagram, no wording. Each is described in our own words, with the originator credited, because the framework is a place to put thinking, not a replacement for the people who did it. Model names and trademarks belong to their respective owners and are used here only to refer to the work itself.
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