#89 Flexibility is Your Friend in Delivering Buy-In; But Be as Rigid as You Can - Interview w/ Luca Paganelli

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 hereLuca's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paganelliluca/In this episode, Scott interviewed Luca Paganelli, Data Architect at the Italian utility Gruppo HERA.To start, some interesting points and/or key takeaways and questions:Introducing new concepts and ways of working around data slowly - not looking to make a hard shift - has worked well. When Gruppo HERA debuted their new data strategy manifesto, none of it was a surprise and it was already relatively in-line with the way many were talking about data and moving forward on their data journeys.HERA's Data, Analytics, and Intelligence Automation (DAIA) team is not forcing domains to comply with HERA's data mesh-inspired guidelines but instead working with them closely to help the domains achieve their data related goals - delivering the "right thing". That gives the DAIA team strong influence to direct the domains' approach to data work without pushback and gives domains better confidence in the guidelines and can mitigate analysis-paralysis risk. This lack of rigidity and strong rules created a better sociotechnical environment to innovate but it can mean nothing really feels standardized because the domains can still choose to go a different direction.The paradigm-shift was initially "stee​p" for both IT and domain owners. But domain owners realized how much better they could serve themselves and external data consumers if they took over more data ownership. IT was afraid to give up control but started to buy in to the leverage and expertise they can provide by empowering the business domains to do great things with their data.A concern with not having broad standardization is bespoke solutions so it is hard to create broad reuse. There is also a challenge of people not being sure how much they can trust the data products. The DAIA team believes the tradeoff is worth it to drive initial buy-in with domain owners.Defining data products has been a struggle. There is a chicken and egg issue of 1) needing to understand who from the business should be involved in designing a data product but 2) data domains must be discovered to know who are the subject matter experts from the business to involve.For HERA, they are...