Skip your prep and service falls apart. Every chef knows this. Most data teams learn it the hard way.
I spent years in professional kitchens before I wrote my first line of code. The rule was simple: mise en place. Everything in its place before service starts. No exceptions.
Skip it and you’re not faster. You’re just borrowing time from the rush. When orders start flying, you’re chopping while plating, hunting for ingredients while tickets pile up. The chaos spreads.
Data teams do the same thing. Skip the data contracts. Skip the schema documentation. Skip the ownership definitions. Ship faster now, figure it out later.
Then later arrives. A pipeline change breaks three downstream consumers nobody mapped. A schema update cascades through systems you didn’t know existed. Everyone stops building features to fight fires.
The fastest kitchens I worked in were obsessively organized. The fastest data teams I’ve seen are the same.
Mise en place isn’t overhead. It’s how you survive the rush.
I still slip up. Deadlines hit, and I skip the prep. Every time, I pay for it.
What’s the prep work your team keeps skipping - and what does it cost you during crunch time?