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Notes on dataarchitecture.

Short essays on architecture, cost, hiring and AI: one cartoon, one idea, most days of the week. No tutorials, no listicles.

Mar 11, 2026 Organizational Dynamics

The Dashboard Nobody Uses (EUR60K Lesson)

Three months of development. EUR60K in cost. Zero daily users. The most expensive screensaver I've ever seen.

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Mar 10, 2026 Data Architecture & Strategy

The Data Lineage Maturity Model (4 Stages)

You can't fix what you can't trace. Here's the 4-stage lineage maturity model.

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Mar 9, 2026 Data Architecture & Strategy

The Deployment Pipeline Concept Applied to Data Products

Your data team deploys to production the same way software teams did in 2008. Manually, nervously, with a 1000-step runbook nobody trusts.

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Mar 8, 2026 Platform & Velocity

The Series B Rescue - Making Data Investor-Ready in 10 Weeks

Due diligence will find your data problems before you do. One company found out the hard way.

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Mar 7, 2026 Organizational Dynamics

CALMS for Data Organizations

The DevOps Handbook has a framework called CALMS. Most data teams only do the A. Here's what they're missing.

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Mar 6, 2026 Data Architecture & Strategy

Horizontal vs Vertical Scaling

Vertical scaling is adding RAM. Horizontal scaling is adding servers. One has a ceiling. One doesn't.

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Mar 5, 2026 Data Architecture & Strategy

Data Platform Teams Are Becoming Product Teams

Nobody adopts a pipeline. They adopt a product. That's what most data teams still don't get.

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Mar 4, 2026 Organizational Dynamics

The Compliance Incident That Cost a Giant Fine (And One Email)

They had microservices, a data lake, and Grafana dashboards for everything. They didn't have an answer to "where does this customer's data …

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Mar 3, 2026 Platform & Velocity

The Data Platform Scaling Checklist (When to Evolve)

Scaling too late costs you 6 months. Scaling too early costs you 18.

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Mar 2, 2026 Organizational Dynamics

Parts Unlimited" Is Your Data Platform

The Phoenix Project described a company drowning in unplanned work. Gene Kim called it Parts Unlimited. You might recognize the patterns.

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