From Chaos to Clarity: Lessons from Data Transformation Projects

Laura Hughes, Head of Data at Softwire, on why data transformation projects fail in ways software projects do not. She spent her early career as a full-stack engineer before moving into data strategy, governance and data engineering about five years ago, and the talk comes out of noticing that data projects are run differently from the agile software teams she came from - and that the problems they hit are rarely the ones anyone planned for. She covers what good data architecture looks like in practice and what separates a business transformation that lands from one that stalls. Architecting Manchester's meetup at the Department Bonded Warehouse. Doors 17:00 with pizza and drinks, talk at 18:00, finished by 19:30. Free; tell the organiser in advance about dietary requirements. Why go: data governance talks are usually given by consultants selling a framework. This is a practitioner describing what went wrong. Best for data engineers, architects and anyone being handed a data migration to lead.