The Data Manifesto
“Getting value from data is as hard as it has ever been. New developments such as generative AI add even more incentives for us to build new products and services, yet success stories in the wild are few and far between. This lack of ROI is not a new problem, and we realize we are still having this conversation decade after decade. This is why we formulated the main principles of enabling data in the form of a manifesto, hoping that we can do for data what the agile manifesto did for software.”
David Castro-Gavino and Boyan Angelov
Manifesto
- If your use case is not measurable, you don’t have a use case
- Stop measuring everything: start measuring what matters
- Beware of pilotitis (but do experiments)
- You have no right to ask for a budget unless you know how you contribute to the value chain
- Start with the end: work backwards
- Your new framework is probably a cargo cult
- Preach data, but not to the choir
- If everyone owns the data, no one does
- Tech is never the problem, you are
- If data is not an asset, it is a liability
- Scalability, performance, and cost: choose two
- Buy, don’t build (unless you can afford it)
- Data modeling is more important than anything (do it as early as possible)
- Balance offense and defense in your projects
By using the manifesto you can:
a) Use a cite-able and easily shareable (with social proof) list of heuristics for data leaders to share with their business counterparts to shine light on the iceberg of topics that needs to be addressed
b) Use a list of heuristics that new data leaders can use to ensure their own work is focused on value
Paper
The manifesto is published as a pre-print on OSF: https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/nh4wm. You can also read it in Paper.
To cite the work: Angelov, B., & Castro-Gavino, D. (2024, October 23). The Enabling Data Model and Manifesto. https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/nh4wm
Last update: 26-03-2025