Insights

The Data Intelligence Journal

Field notes on unifying data, governance, and getting analytics teams to a single source of truth.

Pipeline Economics21 September 20264 min read

Cut Data Pipeline Cost Without Breaking Freshness

Cut data pipeline cost without breaking freshness: split SLOs, delete unused models, increment facts, fail ingest early, and scale compute to the load window.

Data Activation14 September 20264 min read

Reverse ETL: When Pushing Data Back Is Worth It

Reverse ETL pays off when tools must act on warehouse-defined traits with one author and a solid match key. Skip it when you are only copying tables around.

Data Quality7 September 20264 min read

Data Quality Metrics That Change Behaviour

Data quality metrics that people act on: freshness, keys, grain, and validity with owners and pipeline gates. Skip unread scorecards and company-wide indexes.

Dimensional Modeling31 August 20264 min read

Slowly Changing Dimensions: Which Type You Need

Slowly changing dimensions without folklore: when to use type 1, type 2, type 3, or a hybrid, based on the questions you must answer and the data you have.

Data Governance24 August 20264 min read

Data Governance Small Team: Four Artefacts Enough

Data governance small team playbook: owners, ten metrics, access rules, and an incident habit. Skip the council and catalogue until those four exist.

Capacity Planning17 August 20265 min read

Data Warehouse Sizing Before You Have the Data

Data warehouse sizing without production volumes: plan from jobs, grain, retention, freshness, and concurrency, then pick an engine you can resize later.

Data Architecture10 August 20264 min read

Medallion Architecture Bronze Silver Gold, Plainly

Medallion architecture bronze silver gold without the slideware: what each layer may do, what it must not do, and how to implement the three rules this month.

Data Contracts3 August 20265 min read

Data Contracts: Make Producers Own What They Emit

Data contracts put schema, meaning, and freshness on the producer. Learn a one-page contract, ingest tests, and compatibility rules you can ship this week.

Analytics Trust27 July 20265 min read

Single Source of Truth Analytics: Stop Dashboard Wars

Dashboards disagree on definitions, grain, and timing. Use this diagnostic to pick a single source of truth analytics layer and make every report reuse it.

Data Architecture13 October 20253 min read

Medallion Layer Anti-Patterns Bronze Silver Gold

Microsoft’s Fabric notes say medallion fails when bronze cleans, silver serves dashboards, and gold patches quality. Here is how to keep the layers honest.

Data Architecture29 September 20254 min read

Regional Data Silos: Lessons from Citi Wealth Consolidation

Citi Global Wealth moved client and market data off five regional datacentres onto one platform. Here is what that means for any team whose dashboards still disagree.