#306 Building with People for People - Swisscom's Data Mesh Approach and Learnings - Interview w/ Mirela Navodaru

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Mirela's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mirelanavodaru/

In this episode, Scott interviewed Mirela Navodaru, Enterprise and Solution Architect for Data, Analytics, and AI at Swisscom.

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

1. Specifically at Swisscom, it's not about doing data mesh. They want to make data a key part of all their major decisions - operational and strategic - and data mesh means they can put the data production and consumption in far more people's hands. Data mesh is a way to achieve their data goals, not the goal.
2. When you are trying to get people bought in to something like data mesh, you always have to consider what is in it for them. Yes, the overall organization benefiting is great but it’s not the best selling point 😅 try to develop your approach to truly benefit everyone.
3. Data literacy is crucial to getting the most value from data mesh. Data mesh is not about throwing away the important knowledge your data people have but it's about unlocking the value of the knowledge your business people have to be shared with the rest of the organization effectively, reliably, and scalably.
4. ?Controversial? You really have to talk to a lot of people early in your data mesh journey to discover the broader benefits to the organization. That way you can talk to people's specific challenges to get them bought in. When designing your journey, it is important to get input from a large number of people.
5. When talking data as a product versus data products, the first is the core concept and the second is the deliverables. Scott note: this is a really simple but powerful delineation
6. "No value, no party." If there isn't a value proposition, there shouldn't be any action. You need to stay focused on value because there are so many potential places to focus in a data mesh implementation.
7. You have to balance value at the use case level to the domain versus more global value to the organization. At the end of the day, everything you do should add value to the organization but sometimes use cases are much more focused at the domain and that's perfectly expected and acceptable.
8. Data mesh, to really change the organization in the right way, needs top level buy-in. You can't only be the data team trying to head down the data mesh path.
9. Everything in data mesh is about iterating to better. You need the space and room to learn as you go along. You can - an