Data Mesh Governance by Example

Curated examples for Data Mesh guiding values, an operating model, and global policies to support a federated governance group.

We want this to be an open source collection of policy examples, driven by the community. Contribute by submitting a pull request on the GitHub repository.

Data Mesh Governance

The data mesh governance group consists of representatives from the domain teams and the data platform team.

They are temporarily supported by a subject-matter experts, to address special issues, e.g. concerning legal, compliance, and security.

Together, they make sure that data products in the mesh are interoperable and can be used securely. For this, they agree on a few architectural decisions and global policies. To make it easy for domain teams to implement the policies, they specify the requirements for the data platform to automate the policies as much as possible.

Guiding Values

Guiding values are the fundamental beliefs we agree on when implementing data mesh governance. They guide us to make the right choices and give justification for our decisions.

Operating Model

The operating model defines the structure and processes of the data mesh governance group. After forming the group with its members, in the first meeting the collaboration mode, communication channels and a policy repository needs to be decided on.

Members

Collaboration Mode

Decision Making

Communication Channels

Policy Repository

Policies

Policy Template

Definitions

Interoperability

Isolation

Discoverability

Quality

Documentation

Access Control

Privacy & Compliance

Security

Monitoring

Self-service

Ownership

Architecture Decisions

While it is not the federated governance group’s actual job to define the architecture of the data platform, decisions about the platform have consequences for global policies and vice versa, e.g. for policy automation and monitoring. The governance group always has to keep track of those decisions related to the data platform.

Data Platform

Learn more

Communities

Scientific Literature