#206 Learnings from Delivering and Then Measuring Value of Data Mesh Work - Interview w/ Ghada Richani

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Transcript for this episode (link) provided by Starburst. See their Data Mesh Summit recordings here and their great data mesh resource center here. You can download their Data Mesh for Dummies e-book (info gated) here.

Ghada's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ghada-richani/

In this episode, Scott interviewed Ghada Richani, Managing Director, Data, Analytics, and Technology Innovation at Bank of America. To be clear, Ghada was only representing her own views on the episode, not that of the company.

Some key takeaways/thoughts from Ghada's point of view:

1. "What I know today is going to change tomorrow." Data mesh is a journey, don't try to get too comfortable, we should always be trying and iterating. Be an explorer. Scott note: strong agree and so does Zhamak
2. Speed is always a challenge with data mesh - some want to move too fast but others want to boil the ocean to make everything that comes after extremely fast. Work with people to take them along the journey and be part of the decisioning process, don't get ahead of yourself.
3. Take your stakeholders lockstep along your journey, keep them very informed. Let them control prioritization. That way, they can see what changes are happening and why delivery timelines are extending - they made those calls!
4. Expose the evolution of the data product to stakeholders. They can then understand tradeoffs, especially in regulatory or other governance challenges. And again, they own the prioritization :)
5. Don't start with generic requirements, start with stakeholder deliverables. The requirements will emerge from that conversation - stakeholders don't necessarily know what is required technically or as a product structure, but for sure they know what they want to achieve from a business perspective.
6. In data mesh, data producers should be treated as a stakeholder as well. Make sure they are engaged and that they are getting...