Your data governance is either too loose to trust or too tight to ship.
I’ve seen both extremes up close. Anarchy looks great at first. Teams ship fast, nobody waits for approvals. But six months in, you’ve got data silos, conflicting definitions, and security gaps nobody noticed until an audit.
Then there’s the overcorrection. Rigid governance. Every change needs three sign-offs. Engineers start building shadow systems because the official path takes weeks. You’ve traded one problem for another.
The pattern that actually works is a hybrid. Central guardrails for the things that matter - security, naming conventions, data contracts. Domain autonomy for everything else. Fast enough to enable the business. Controlled enough that people trust the data.
I used to lean toward the strict side. I thought if you got the rules right, compliance would follow. It doesn’t. Governance that feels like punishment gets routed around. Every time.
The sweet spot isn’t a fixed point. It shifts as your company grows.
Where does your org sit on the spectrum right now - and is it working or just familiar?