General
Data-Related Software Engineering Best Practices

Data-Related Software Engineering Best Practices

Data is being used by businesses more and more to inform and direct choices. Data-driven decisions have been shown to be more dependable, consistent, and accurate, as they should be. Data management becomes a crucial skill as data is increasingly used in decision-making. The development of the data team is a sign that companies are emphasizing data management techniques and expanding data usage.

The role of the modern data team has moved beyond producing flashy dashboards for executives, using Excel as a tool for analysts. But there are more people involved than just programmers. It has people across the technical spectrum who are increasingly specialized. In order to support better decision-making and more effective solutions, the data team is now seated alongside other business teams. To administer a data warehouse or lake on a large scale, technical positions like data engineers and software engineers are required. To extract insights from the gathered data and present them in dashboards and charts that can help people make better decisions, data scientists and analysts are required. Business analysts can convert organizational requirements into data requirements.

The expectations and needs of a data team are still fast changing, though, and a number of models have arisen based on various situations. A business can opt for a centralized, federated, or hybrid type of organization. Particular technological stacks and tools can alter the makeup and goals of the data team. Vertically integrated solutions are designed to empower non-technical users and lessen the requirement for dedicated data engineers or for hiring software engineering staff to support data management when it comes to customer data.

Companies naturally start moving to more complicated structures as the market develops, and they become more adept at using data. Instead, then relying on a single solution to satisfy all of their demands, companies build a data infrastructure by fusing a variety of products together. The emergence of innovative tools that fill particular data gaps is evidence of this. There are now data science platforms, data visualization platforms, data monitoring software, and data loaders instead of just “a data analytics program” as the definition of software.

Everything was initially written in HTML, CSS, and JS. The LAMP stack then took control and full-stack web applications gained popularity. We now have frameworks for everything from queuing software for distributed applications, serverless software for cloud-native apps, and even more front-end frameworks since software engineering has become so diversified. The data industry is experiencing a similar situation. While new competitors concentrated on differentiating themselves and interoperability, legacy players offered all-inclusive solutions.

Although there is room for disagreement over the “unbundling” of the data stack, the discussion itself shows that the sector is developing.

Maintaining uptime and reliability become increasingly important as data stacks become more complicated. The data sector is developing in response to this demand. To ensure that data quality can be maintained and that businesses can react swiftly if an issue emerges, data monitoring and data quality software is now readily available. Data teams and infrastructure are adopting common software engineering techniques like CI/CD, IaaC, and reusable components. With the aid of technologies like Rudderstack, data transformations and ETL pipelines can be built in code, versioned, and reused, improving stability and making these services more palpable.

A recent development known as “data as code” emphasizes incrementally growing data collections while retaining version control. As a result, data teams can address concerns with data poisoning fast and effectively. These developments demonstrate how the data discipline is developing in tandem with the expanding demand for large-scale data management.

Complicated data team organization, the creation of more complex data infrastructure, and the improvement of data platform reliability are all difficult tasks, but it is wonderful that they are emerging. It is evidence that the data sector is developing and thriving. Many of the industry’s initial issues have been resolved. To open up more complicated use cases, it is currently moving on to new challenges. We anticipate that additional software engineering principles will be adopted and applied more quickly as the industry develops.