#106 Building an Effective Data Strategy: Why oh Why Don't You Start with the Why - Interview w/ Liz Henderson

Sign up for Data Mesh Understanding's free roundtable and introduction programs here: https://landing.datameshunderstanding.com/Please Rate and Review us on your podcast app of choice!If you want to be a guest or give feedback (suggestions for topics, comments, etc.), please see hereEpisode list and links to all available episode transcripts here.Provided as a free resource by Data Mesh Understanding / Scott Hirleman. Get in touch with Scott on LinkedIn if you want to chat data mesh.Transcript for this episode (link) provided by Starburst. See their Data Mesh Summit recordings here and their great data mesh resource center hereLiz's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lizhendersondata/Liz's website: https://lizhendersondata.wordpress.com/In this episode, Scott interviewed Liz Henderson AKA The Data Queen, Executive Advisor at Capgemini. To be clear, Liz was only representing her own views on the podcast.Some high-level takeaways/thoughts from Liz's view:To drive buy-in and engagement in a data strategy - especially with people outside the IT/data team - focus on the "why". Why are you doing this initiative or approach? What business goals is it supporting?Also on driving buy-in for a data initiative, start by listening instead of selling/pitching. Focus on the business needs and work backwards to show how data can help address those needs.To be successful with a large change-management data initiative, you need the patience, leadership, courage, and will to push forward. And the budget - don't forget the budget :DYou can't have an effective data strategy if it isn't directly tied into the business strategy. Really consider how data can help to support and execute on the business strategy. Data strategy in a vacuum away from the business is a recipe for trouble.It's very easy to get overly focused in data on what you are delivering instead of why you are delivering it and who it is supposed to serve. If you want to be successful, you need to focus on the latter two. And look to deliver continuous incremental value rather than a back-end loaded value delivery.Change management is very easy to get wrong in data. Really consider if you can not only get the ball rolling, but keep it rolling and in the right direction to implement a large change. Loss of momentum can mean loss of funding.If data mesh follows a similar pattern to data literacy, it's likely to be 3-4 years from initial large swell in hype around data mesh - whether that was late 2021 or more now - until we really see a clear picture of how more organizations have implemented. There needs to be a time for trial and error.Data literacy can only get you so far - you need data storytelling and...

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Interviews with data mesh practitioners, deep dives/how-tos, anti-patterns, panels, chats (not debates) with skeptics, "mesh musings", and so much more. Host Scott Hirleman (founder of the Data Mesh Learning Community) shares his learnings - and those of the broader data community - from over a year of deep diving into data mesh. Each episode contains a BLUF - bottom line, up front - so you can quickly absorb a few key takeaways and also decide if an episode will be useful to you - nothing worse than listening for 20+ minutes before figuring out if a podcast episode is going to be interesting and/or incremental ;) Hoping to provide quality transcripts in the future - if you want to help, please reach out! Data Mesh Radio is also looking for guests to share their experience with data mesh! Even if that experience is 'I am confused, let's chat about' some specific topic. Yes, that could be you! You can check out our guest and feedback FAQ, including how to submit your name to be a guest and how to submit feedback - including anonymously if you want - here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dDdb1mEhmcYqx3xYAvPuM1FZMuGiCszyY9x8X250KuQ/edit?usp=sharing Data Mesh Radio is committed to diversity and inclusion. This includes in our guests and guest hosts. If you are part of a minoritized group, please see this as an open invitation to being a guest, so please hit the link above. If you are looking for additional useful information on data mesh, we recommend the community resources from Data Mesh Learning. All are vendor independent. https://datameshlearning.com/community/ You should also follow Zhamak Dehghani (founder of the data mesh concept); she posts a lot of great things on LinkedIn and has a wonderful data mesh book through O'Reilly. Plus, she's just a nice person: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zhamak-dehghani/detail/recent-activity/shares/ Data Mesh Radio is provided as a free community resource by DataStax. If you need a database that is easy to scale - read: serverless - but also easy to develop for - many APIs including gRPC, REST, JSON, GraphQL, etc. all of which are OSS under the Stargate project - check out DataStax's AstraDB service :) Built on Apache Cassandra, AstraDB is very performant and oh yeah, is also multi-region/multi-cloud so you can focus on scaling your company, not your database. There's a free forever tier for poking around/home projects and you can also use code DAAP500 for a $500 free credit (apply under payment options): https://www.datastax.com/products/datastax-astra?utm_source=DataMeshRadio