The argument for Data-Driven Design

What came first, the egg or the chicken? This question has baffled humankind for generations. Some scientists even spend billions of dollars researching on this topic and concluded-- that's hardly the point unless it is a question of having breakfast, in which case the egg always comes first with bread.

But closer to home, one question that has baffled project teams for ages is the question of data-driven design. Picture this scenario, a common occurrence in the office or on zoom meetings, as it is today. Team awesome super admins want to create fields on accounts to capture some data. It is essential and paramount for their business to be able to achieve this information on the Account details.

The team awesome super admins talk to the BAs and stress the need of the so-called five fields that are important. How hard is it to create those fields?

In the Salesforce world, this is not very uncommon. With so many trailheads and video tutorials available online, rehashing the same straightforward content for ages after ages- it is easy to create fields on Salesforce. But it is not. And that is the main point.

The team super admins, even though knowledgable of Salesforce, will have a narrow tunnel view to the enterprise implementation. And the inability to see the bigger picture will cause technical debt in the future. The requirements should come in the form of data to be captured and not fields to create.

The five fields should fit in the bigger picture. The fields will be necessary for team awesome super admins. But are they essential for the definition of a customer? What do the fields mean in terms of the entire company? Should they be on Account or can there be a separate object with one- one relationship on the Account? Are they mastered in some external system? Are they needed for reporting? Are they requirement downstream, upstream or any other place?

For enterprise implementation, such thinking is critical. We cannot merely accept the requirements that do not explain the necessity of the fields, and we cannot overload the system by creating hundreds of fields- because it is easy to do so.

Some thoughts that haunted my mind as I cooked my eggs sunny side up. And what do you know- the eggs came first.

Have you faced a situation like this before?