Piethein Strengholt - Collected Quotes

"For advanced analytics, a well-designed data pipeline is a prerequisite, so a large part of your focus should be on automation. This is also the most difficult work. To be successful, you need to stitch everything together." (Piethein Strengholt, "Data Management at Scale: Best Practices for Enterprise Architecture", 2020)

"One of the patterns from domain-driven design is called bounded context. Bounded contexts are used to set the logical boundaries of a domain’s solution space for better managing complexity. It’s important that teams understand which aspects, including data, they can change on their own and which are shared dependencies for which they need to coordinate with other teams to avoid breaking things. Setting boundaries helps teams and developers manage the dependencies more efficiently." (Piethein Strengholt, "Data Management at Scale: Best Practices for Enterprise Architecture", 2020)

"The logical boundaries are typically explicit and enforced on areas with clear and higher cohesion. These domain dependencies can sit on different levels, such as specific parts of the application, processes, associated database designs, etc. The bounded context, we can conclude, is polymorphic and can be applied to many different viewpoints. Polymorphic means that the bounded context size and shape can vary based on viewpoint and surroundings. This also means you need to be explicit when using a bounded context; otherwise it remains pretty vague." (Piethein Strengholt, "Data Management at Scale: Best Practices for Enterprise Architecture", 2020)

"The transformation of a monolithic application into a distributed application creates many challenges for data management." (Piethein Strengholt, "Data Management at Scale: Best Practices for Enterprise Architecture", 2020)

"A domain aggregate is a cluster of domain objects that can be treated as a single unit. When you have a collection of objects of the same format and type that are used together, you can model them as a single object, simplifying their usage for other domains." (Piethein Strengholt, "Data Management at Scale: Modern Data Architecture with Data Mesh and Data Fabric" 2nd Ed., 2023)

"Decentralization involves risks, because the more you spread out activities across the organization, the harder it gets to harmonize strategy and align and orchestrate planning, let alone foster the culture and recruit the talent needed to properly manage your data." (Piethein Strengholt, "Data Management at Scale: Modern Data Architecture with Data Mesh and Data Fabric" 2nd Ed., 2023)

"Enterprises have difficulties in interpreting new concepts like the data mesh and data fabric, because pragmatic guidance and experiences from the field are missing. In addition to that, the data mesh fully embraces a decentralized approach, which is a transformational change not only for the data architecture and technology, but even more so for organization and processes. This means the transformation cannot only be led by IT; it’s a business transformation as well." (Piethein Strengholt, "Data Management at Scale: Modern Data Architecture with Data Mesh and Data Fabric" 2nd Ed., 2023)

"The data fabric is an approach that addresses today’s data management and scalability challenges by adding intelligence and simplifying data access using self-service. In contrast to the data mesh, it focuses more on the technology layer. It’s an architectural vision using unified metadata with an end-to-end integrated layer (fabric) for easily accessing, integrating, provisioning, and using data."  (Piethein Strengholt, "Data Management at Scale: Modern Data Architecture with Data Mesh and Data Fabric" 2nd Ed., 2023)

"The data mesh is an exciting new methodology for managing data at large. The concept foresees an architecture in which data is highly distributed and a future in which scalability is achieved by federating responsibilities. It puts an emphasis on the human factor and addressing the challenges of managing the increasing complexity of data architectures." (Piethein Strengholt, "Data Management at Scale: Modern Data Architecture with Data Mesh and Data Fabric" 2nd Ed., 2023)