#302 Finding and Delivering on a Good Initial Data Mesh Use Case - Interview w/ Basten Carmio

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Basten's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/basten-carmio-2585576/

In this episode, Scott interviewed Basten Carmio, Customer Delivery Architect of Data and Analytics at AWS Professional Services. To be clear, he was only representing his own views on the episode.

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

1. Your first use case - at the core - should A) deliver value in and of itself and B) improve your capabilities to deliver on incremental use cases. That's balancing value delivery, improving capabilities, and building momentum which are all key to a successful long-term mesh implementation.
2. When thinking about data mesh - or really any tech initiative - it's crucial to understand your starting state, not just your target end state. You need to adjust any approach to your realities and make incremental progress.
3. ?Controversial?: Relatedly, it's very important to define what success looks like. Doing data mesh cannot be the goal. You need to consider your maturity levels and where you want to focus and what will deliver value for your organization. That is different for each organization. Scott note: this shouldn't be controversial but many companies are not defining their mesh value bet…
4. Even aligning everyone on your organization's definition of mesh success will probably be hard. But it's important to do.
5. For a data mesh readiness assessment, consider where you can deliver incremental value and align it to your general business strategy. If you aren't ready to build incrementally, you aren't going to do well with data mesh.
6. A common value theme for data mesh implementations is easier collaboration across the organization through data; that leads to faster reactions to changes and opportunities in your markets. Mesh done well means it's far faster and easier for lines of business to collaborate with each other - especially in a reliable and scalable way - and there are far better standard rules/policies/ways of working around that collaboration. But organizations have to see value in that or there may be mesh resistance.
7. As many have said, you must approach data mesh in a thin slice. Trying to focus too much on any pillar at the expense of the others leads to challenges. Scott note: Zhamak literally has a figure on this she shares often. It's easy to get unbalanced if you ignore a principle and fixing that takes more effort than thin slicing.
8. ?Controve