Definition: business accountable
Quality: data owner accountable
Build: model engineer responsible
Publish: semantic steward controls
Use: analysts consulted
Change: consumers informed and test
One owner label is not enough
A wrong definition, missing source, broken transformation, and unapproved release are different failures. A generic “data owner” still leaves teams waiting during an incident.
Assign responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed roles by artifact and activity.
Map responsibility to artifacts
Facts, dimensions, metrics, terms, quality rules, access policy, and release versions each need a row. Business is commonly accountable for meaning; data teams implement and operate quality; security is consulted on sensitive scope.
Keep one clear accountable role while allowing several responsible or consulted roles.
Put RACI into the change path
A proposer states reason and impact, an implementer changes and tests, the accountable role approves, and consumers receive notice before activation.
Detect gaps when people leave, teams reorganize, or owners do not respond, with an escalation route rather than a stale name.
Connect names to operational evidence
Ownership should link to definition, code, tests, lineage, consumers, changes, and incidents. A directory entry alone does not shorten diagnosis.
Set service expectations by business impact instead of promising one response time for every model.
Exercise both change and failure
Simulate a core metric revision, an upstream field outage, and an absent owner. Verify notification, approval, repair, user communication, and rollback.
BuildTable may be evaluated for collaborative modeling; RACI fields, approvals, notifications, lineage, and identity integration require confirmation.
Public references
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