Shifting Left – Evolution of Data Quality and Consumer Satisfaction

What does “treating data as an asset” actually mean?

‘In today’s data-driven world, data has evolved from a mere byproduct to the very essence of business operations, fueling strategic decisions, unlocking innovative AI models, and becoming a foundational asset.’

Treating data as an asset implies a shift left—a what?

‘”Shift Left” means embedding data quality, governance, and compliance practices as early as possible in the software development lifecycle, ideally directly into the code that produces the data.’

Shifting left is a established software development technique to improve code quality. Because code drives data, code quality drives data quality!

‘This approach transforms data management from a reactive firefighting exercise into a proactive, preventative discipline. It acknowledges that data is code, or more accurately, produced by code, and therefore, managing it well means starting at its point of creation.’

As data strategist Peter Baumann explains:

A comprehensive “Shift Left” framework encompasses three categories of quality checks:
🖼️ Design-Time Quality
🏃‍➡️ Run-Time Quality
📊 Consumption-Time Quality

The full good read on Substack:

👉 https://peterbaumann.substack.com/p/shifting-left-evolution-of-data-quality