Reflections from CDOIQ 2024

Last week I had the privilege of attending the 18th annual CDOIQ in Boston.

While I did not speak this year, I did get the opportunity to be the track producer for one of the virtual tracks, introducing nearly a dozen excellent speakers and facilitating discussion on their topics ranging from data literacy to drug discovery and data analysis in oil & gas. The mix of industry, government, academia and consulting representation ensured great conversation and sharing of ideas across organization size, function and objectives.

This year had several key themes emerge with valuable stories and experience for any organization on their own data journey:

Cooking Analogies

Jeremy Forman with Pfizer started a trend of using cooking analogies to describe the data lifecycle. He referred to the data preparation activities as "mise en place". In the cooking context, this is the process of the chef preparing all their ingredients ahead of time, so when they begin to cook a given dish they are focused, staying in a single place and executing at maximum creativity and attention to detail. This analogy is helpful as we think about preparing data products that are complete, accurate and trustworthy so data science teams can execute at maximum creativity and attention to detail.

This cooking inspiration continued with Deep Lidder and his recommendations to ensure all data is labeled, as in a kitchen we need to know when sauces were produced and their ingredients. With data products, we must know where assets are, how to describe them in business terms and the governing rules for their usage.

Give to Get

Organizations continue to work toward holistic data catalogs that make locating data assets quick and reliable. Organizations have experimented with many methods to inventory their assets and populate the initial catalog, while also working to keep the records up to date as the organization and industry evolve. The growing consensus is that the most effective model is one of “give to get”, creating a culture where every team that publishes data to the catalog is rewarded with a growing list of data assets from other parts of the organization. This platform mindset of connecting producers and consumers creates ever-growing value for all participants.

Daylight Between CDO and CISO Organizations

Organizations that have the lowest measurable risk are often those that have the tightest relationship between the CDO and CISO organizations. As the amount of daylight between teams grows we see an ever-increasing set of conditions created including a lack of visibility into data risk, lack of regulatory scrutiny, and lack of consistency in controls implementation. As CDO and CISO organizations work together across the lifecycle of project definition, implementation and operationalization they can work collectively to share experience and reusable architectural patterns.

Consumer Experience Sets the Bar

Multiple CDOs expressed challenges meeting the expectations of their users who are ever more tech-savvy and have access to advanced analytical tools as a consumer. I wrote about this last year and believe it's truer than ever. Enterprise technology teams must adopt a product-centric mindset in everything they do. This means they engage users in discovery, they build mockups of their capabilities for real-time feedback and they constantly work to increase their release velocity.

Data Products

If this year could be described by a single theme, it would be 'data products'. They have become mainstream as a language to communicate data assets, their value, their dimensions and engage data consumers in product-driven development programs. Data products have been on the discussion list for several years, but this year is different in their broad adoption as a reusable pattern and communication method. Companies like The Modern Data Company are redefining how we create and manage data products. Organizations as big as Pfizer and the Veterans Administration are using data products to prioritize work and expose data assets for consumption broadly across their organizations. Multiple talks included reusable frameworks to define data products, manage lifecycle and engage users on real-time feedback to feed future roadmaps.

As with past years, the quality of speakers and their collective experience is impressive. I encourage everyone to watch the session recordings online. I look forward to seeing everyone at CDOIQ 2025.