Ownership overview

Ownership can be set up both within and outside the data team to, e.g., notify an upstream engineering team of issues on a data source created by them.

Defining ownership lets you.

• Group related data assets and their health by owner group to make it easier to take action.
• Alert or tag the relevant people in Slack based on the status of assets they own.
• Assign owners to a data product to foster a sense of responsibility within the data stack.

An overview of example owners and their associated ownerships. You can create an unlimited number of owners

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Create an owner

1. See Creating an owner

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Editing or deleting an owner

1. Navigate to Owners and click the three dots to Edit or Delete an owner

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Ownership best practices

While there’s no one-fit-answer to ownership, we’ve seen these approaches work well.

• Start small and don’t overthink it—if you’re just getting started, you don’t have to define owners for all your data assets. Instead, start by defining the smallest possible amount of data assets that are most critical for your business. Data Products (Data products overview) is a good starting point.
• Beware of individual ownership—use existing groups to define ownership that already represents how your company works. Beware of defining owners as individuals (e.g., John Doe). Instead, use a group that represents their function (e.g., product analytics) even if there’s only one person in the group. This makes it easier to manage if people move around or leave your company.
• Get buy-in outside the data team—before you start routing alerts to upstream teams, ensure that you clearly agree on what’s expected when they receive an alert.
• Integrate ownership into your existing workflows—for example, integrating ownership into your Slack or email alerting is a great way to drive accountability and see action from the work you put into defining owners.
• Be consistent—be consistent in how you define ownership and at what level so different teams don’t make their own interpretations.