In my 20 years working with data, I have often pushed my teams to “manage our data work like a website.” What do I mean by this? I mean that we need to monitor how data is being used, who is engaging with our data, how often they are engaging with our data, and then be prepared to field the many questions that are sure to follow. 

The key to doing this at scale is to increase observability within data platforms. At Domo, we achieve this observability via our DomoStats including a very robust Activity Log which can capture activity across a Domo instance.  

To illustrate the power of the DomoStats’ Activity Log, I took a quick look at the activity log for the Domo instance we use for all of our blogs and public insights work, including the COVID Tracker. Even on this smaller instance (below), the activity log has recorded 1.8 million activities across 37 different action types over the past 12 months. While governance and observability may not always seem to be the most exciting topic out there in the data world, they are key to operationalizing data at scale.