Monitor for business impact, not just pipeline failures
Pipeline uptime can look healthy while KPIs are wrong. Add semantic checks around completeness, distribution drift, and SLA-critical tables tied to business reports.
Clarify ownership for each data domain
When incidents occur, teams need immediate escalation paths. A domain owner model shortens response time and prevents unresolved cross-team dependencies.
- Domain-level data contracts and owners
- Automated tests in CI and production checks
- Incident playbooks with severity tiers
Close the loop after every incident
Run short post-incident reviews with root-cause tagging. The goal is not blame; it is systemic hardening through better contracts, tests, and observability coverage.
Over time, this creates data trust that directly improves decision-making quality.