Ownership Model

For Business Users

Clear data ownership is essential for data quality and governance. Olytix Core's ownership model ensures every data asset has accountable individuals who maintain its accuracy and relevance.

Why Ownership Matters

Without clear ownership:

Nobody is responsible for data quality
Issues go unresolved
Documentation becomes stale
Users don't know who to ask

With clear ownership:

Accountability for quality
Fast issue resolution
Current documentation
Clear escalation paths

Ownership Roles

Olytix Core supports multiple ownership roles:

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                    Data Ownership Hierarchy                          │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                                                                      │
│                      ┌─────────────────┐                            │
│                      │   Data Owner    │                            │
│                      │   (Accountable) │                            │
│                      └────────┬────────┘                            │
│                               │                                      │
│            ┌──────────────────┼──────────────────┐                  │
│            │                  │                  │                  │
│            ▼                  ▼                  ▼                  │
│   ┌─────────────────┐ ┌─────────────┐ ┌─────────────────┐          │
│   │  Data Steward   │ │  Technical  │ │   Subject       │          │
│   │  (Day-to-day)   │ │   Owner     │ │   Matter Expert │          │
│   └─────────────────┘ └─────────────┘ └─────────────────┘          │
│                                                                      │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Role Definitions

Role	Responsibility	Typically
Data Owner	Ultimate accountability, approves changes	Business leader
Data Steward	Day-to-day quality and maintenance	Analyst, data team
Technical Owner	Technical implementation and performance	Engineer
Subject Matter Expert	Business context and validation	Domain expert

Configuring Ownership

Metric Ownership

metrics:
  - name: monthly_revenue
    meta:
      # Primary owner (accountable)
      owner: finance-team
      owner_contact: finance-director@company.com

      # Data steward (day-to-day)
      steward: john.smith@company.com
      steward_slack: "#finance-data"

      # Technical owner
      technical_owner: data-engineering@company.com

      # Subject matter experts
      sme:
        - jane.doe@company.com (revenue recognition)
        - bob.wilson@company.com (refunds)

Cube Ownership

cubes:
  - name: orders
    meta:
      owner: sales-operations@company.com
      steward: sales-analyst@company.com
      technical_owner: data-platform@company.com

      # Domain-specific contacts
      contacts:
        data_quality: data-quality-team@company.com
        security: security-team@company.com
        compliance: compliance@company.com

Source Ownership

sources:
  - name: salesforce
    meta:
      owner: sales-operations@company.com
      technical_owner: integration-team@company.com
      vendor_contact: support@salesforce.com

      sla:
        freshness: 1 hour
        availability: 99.9%
        escalation: platform-oncall@company.com

Ownership Assignment

By Domain

# olytix-core_project.yml
governance:
  ownership:
    domains:
      finance:
        default_owner: finance-team@company.com
        default_steward: finance-analyst@company.com
        approvers:
          - cfo@company.com
          - finance-controller@company.com

      sales:
        default_owner: sales-ops@company.com
        default_steward: sales-analyst@company.com
        approvers:
          - vp-sales@company.com

      customer:
        default_owner: customer-success@company.com
        default_steward: cs-analyst@company.com
        approvers:
          - vp-customer-success@company.com

By Asset Type

governance:
  ownership:
    asset_types:
      sources:
        default_owner: data-engineering@company.com
        default_technical_owner: platform-team@company.com

      models:
        default_owner: analytics-team@company.com
        default_technical_owner: data-engineering@company.com

      cubes:
        default_owner: analytics-team@company.com
        default_steward: business-analyst@company.com

      metrics:
        # Metrics inherit from cube owner by default
        inherit_from: cube

Ownership Responsibilities

Data Owner Responsibilities

Data Owner Checklist
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Strategic:
☐ Define data strategy for domain
☐ Approve metric definitions
☐ Authorize access requests
☐ Resolve escalated issues

Governance:
☐ Review certification requests
☐ Ensure compliance requirements met
☐ Approve breaking changes
☐ Participate in quarterly reviews

Communication:
☐ Communicate changes to stakeholders
☐ Respond to escalated questions
☐ Represent domain in governance meetings
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Data Steward Responsibilities

Data Steward Checklist
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Daily:
☐ Monitor data quality alerts
☐ Respond to user questions
☐ Triage data issues

Weekly:
☐ Review quality metrics
☐ Update documentation
☐ Check certification status

Monthly:
☐ Quality trend analysis
☐ Stakeholder communication
☐ Process improvements

Quarterly:
☐ Certification reviews
☐ Stakeholder feedback
☐ Documentation audit
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Technical Owner Responsibilities

Technical Owner Checklist
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Operational:
☐ Ensure pipeline reliability
☐ Monitor performance
☐ Respond to technical alerts
☐ Maintain infrastructure

Development:
☐ Implement metric changes
☐ Optimize query performance
☐ Maintain data tests
☐ Update technical documentation

Security:
☐ Manage access controls
☐ Audit access logs
☐ Implement security requirements
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Ownership Dashboard

Data Ownership Overview
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Coverage
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Assets with owners:    156/160 (97.5%)
Assets with stewards:  145/160 (90.6%)
Assets with tech owners: 160/160 (100%)

Unowned Assets (Need Assignment)
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
⚠ metric: experimental_conversion_rate  (created: Jan 15)
⚠ cube: temp_marketing_analysis         (created: Jan 10)
⚠ model: stg_legacy_orders              (created: Dec 20)
⚠ source: deprecated_crm                (created: Nov 15)

Owner Activity (Last 30 Days)
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Owner              │ Issues │ Reviews │ Changes │ Response
───────────────────┼────────┼─────────┼─────────┼──────────
finance-team       │     12 │       8 │       5 │    4 hrs
sales-ops          │      8 │       5 │       3 │    6 hrs
customer-success   │      5 │       3 │       2 │    8 hrs
marketing          │     15 │       4 │       7 │   12 hrs  ⚠

Ownership Health Score: 94%
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Ownership Transitions

Transferring Ownership

When ownership changes:

ownership_transfer:
  metric: monthly_revenue
  from: old-finance-team@company.com
  to: new-finance-lead@company.com

  transfer_date: 2024-02-01

  checklist:
    - documentation_reviewed: true
    - knowledge_transfer_complete: true
    - access_granted: true
    - stakeholders_notified: true

  notifications:
    - stakeholders
    - data-governance
    - dependents

Handling Departures

When an owner leaves:

governance:
  ownership:
    departure_handling:
      # Automatically assign to backup owner
      use_backup_owner: true

      # Notify these roles
      notify_on_orphan:
        - data-governance@company.com
        - manager-of-departing-owner

      # Grace period before escalation
      reassignment_deadline_days: 14

Ownership Workflows

Issue Escalation

Issue Escalation Path
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Level 1: Data Steward
  Response time: 4 hours
  Handles: Data quality issues, user questions

    │ If unresolved after 8 hours
    ▼

Level 2: Technical Owner
  Response time: 2 hours
  Handles: Technical issues, performance problems

    │ If unresolved after 4 hours
    ▼

Level 3: Data Owner
  Response time: 1 hour
  Handles: Business impact, cross-team coordination

    │ If critical business impact
    ▼

Level 4: Data Governance Lead
  Response time: Immediate
  Handles: Escalations, policy decisions
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Change Approval

Change Approval Workflow
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Change Type: Metric Definition Update

Proposed Change:
  Metric: monthly_revenue
  Change: Add refund exclusion

Approval Chain:
  ┌─────────────────┐
  │ 1. Requester    │ ✓ Submitted by john.smith@company.com
  └────────┬────────┘
           ▼
  ┌─────────────────┐
  │ 2. Data Steward │ ✓ Approved by steward@company.com
  └────────┬────────┘   "Change looks correct"
           ▼
  ┌─────────────────┐
  │ 3. Tech Owner   │ ✓ Approved by tech@company.com
  └────────┬────────┘   "No performance impact"
           ▼
  ┌─────────────────┐
  │ 4. Data Owner   │ ⏳ Pending: finance-dir@company.com
  └────────┬────────┘
           ▼
  ┌─────────────────┐
  │ 5. Implemented  │
  └─────────────────┘

Status: Awaiting final approval
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Best Practices

1. Assign at Creation

# Require ownership at metric creation
governance:
  ownership:
    required_at_creation:
      - owner
      - steward
    optional_at_creation:
      - technical_owner
      - sme

2. Regular Reviews

governance:
  ownership:
    review_cycle: quarterly

    review_items:
      - owner_still_appropriate: true
      - steward_active: true
      - documentation_current: true
      - quality_acceptable: true

3. Clear Escalation

Document escalation paths clearly:

meta:
  escalation:
    primary: steward@company.com
    secondary: owner@company.com
    emergency: data-governance@company.com
    oncall_rotation: https://pagerduty.com/rotations/data

4. Ownership Metrics

Track ownership health:

ownership_metrics:
  - coverage_percentage  # Assets with owners
  - response_time_p95    # Time to respond to issues
  - orphan_count         # Assets without owners
  - review_completion    # % of reviews completed on time

Next Steps

Ready to implement ownership?

Start with Critical Assets

Begin by assigning owners to your most important metrics and cubes. Expand ownership coverage incrementally.

Why Ownership Matters​

Ownership Roles​

Role Definitions​

Configuring Ownership​

Metric Ownership​

Cube Ownership​

Source Ownership​

Ownership Assignment​

By Domain​

By Asset Type​

Ownership Responsibilities​

Data Owner Responsibilities​

Data Steward Responsibilities​

Technical Owner Responsibilities​

Ownership Dashboard​

Ownership Transitions​

Transferring Ownership​

Handling Departures​

Ownership Workflows​

Issue Escalation​

Change Approval​

Best Practices​

1. Assign at Creation​

2. Regular Reviews​

3. Clear Escalation​

4. Ownership Metrics​

Next Steps​