Bringing Data Consumers and Generators Closer Together

In this chapter, we’ll look at the importance of bringing data consumers and generators closer together and why that is one of the key objectives when adopting data contracts. It’s only by being clear on the roles and responsibilities that these two groups of people can work effectively and efficiently to realize our goal of extracting the most business value from our data. Therefore, we’ll start by defining these roles and what each of those roles expect from the other, before being explicit about the responsibilities and accountabilities of each role.

Next, we’ll discuss a data consumer that is often overlooked – the product engineering teams. They are maybe the most important consumers in your organization and yet, like other consumers, are often unable to rely on the data that is generated. This leads to unreliable services or the inability to use the valuable data generated in other parts...