Putting Data Contracts First
The Contract-First Philosophy: An Agreement Before an Asset
To build trust in data, we must begin with a new philosophy. The central idea is simple but profound: we must define the rules of engagement before the data is ever used. This is the essence of the contract-first approach. It’s a commitment to creating an explicit, machine-readable agreement between a data producer and its consumers before the data product is even built.
Why is the Contract-First Approach so Critical?
Because it forces the most important conversations to happen at the beginning of the process, not at the end when a dashboard is broken. When you define a contract first, you are no longer just documenting a table after the fact; you are co-designing a reliable asset with your stakeholders. Ambiguities about data meaning, quality expectations, and service levels are resolved from the outset, turning governance
from a reactive, punitive process into a proactive, collaborative one. This philosophy is the architectural linchpin that makes trustwo hy data at scale possible.
At the hea of this philosophy are two core concepts: the data product and its governing data contract.
What is a Data Product?
A data product is not just a table in a database or a file in a
data lake. It’s a complete, packaged, and reusable data asset,
designed to be valuable for a specific group of consumers.
Think of it like any other product you might buy: it’s welldocumented, has a quality guarantee, and is easy to use.