3 Domain Ownership

In this chapter, we will focus on Data Mesh’s Domain Ownership principle. Domain ownership is about decentralizing responsibility for data and shifting it to business domains. It is a stark contrast to the popular model of centralizing data responsibility within the remit of the Central Data Team.

The logic behind decentralization is that the people closest to some business area know the most about its generated data and are best suited for the task.

To learn how to apply decentralization in a domain-oriented way, we will consider how business activities influence the design and ownership of Data Products.

We start our journey by explaining how to understand, capture and visualize our Domain and what is Domain and Domain-Driven Design. We will use two workshop techniques: Domain Storytelling and Event Storming. (Section 3.1)

3.1 Capturing and analyzing domains

3.1.1 Domain-Driven Design 101

3.1.2 Invite the right people

3.1.3 Choose the correct workshop technique

3.2 Apply ownership using domain decomposition

3.2.1 Domain, subdomain & business capability

3.2.2 Decompose domain using business capability modeling

3.2.3 How domains and business capabilities are related to data?

3.2.4 Assign responsibilities to Data Product-owning team

3.2.5 Choose the right team to own data

3.3 Apply ownership using Data Use Cases

3.3.1 Data use cases

3.3.2 Model and Bounded Context

3.3.3 Set up boundaries of use case-driven data products

3.3.4 Choose the right team to own data

3.4 Apply ownership using design heuristics

3.4.1 What is heuristic?

3.4.2 Using design heuristics

3.4.3 Designing heuristics and possible boundaries

3.5 Final landscape - the mesh of interconnected Data Products

3.6 Summary