Data Mesh Domain Map

flowchart TB
  subgraph d1["Domain: Sales"]
    direction TB
    p1["<b>customer-360</b><br/><i>daily · 99.5% freshness SLO<br/>owner: Sales Data</i>"]
    p2["<b>pipeline-facts</b><br/><i>hourly</i>"]
  end
  subgraph d2["Domain: Fulfilment"]
    direction TB
    p3["<b>order-events</b><br/><i>streaming · &lt;60s<br/>owner: Fulfilment Eng</i>"]
    p4["<b>delivery-performance</b><br/><i>daily</i>"]
  end
  subgraph d3["Domain: Finance"]
    direction TB
    p5["<b>revenue-recognised</b><br/><i>daily · certified<br/>owner: Finance Systems</i>"]
  end

  subgraph plat["Self-Serve Platform"]
    direction LR
    s1["storage + compute"] --- s2["catalog + lineage"] --- s3["access control"] --- s4["quality + observability"]
  end

  gov["Federated Governance<br/><i>global: identity keys · classification · retention</i>"]

  p3 -->|"consumed by"| p1
  p1 -->|"consumed by"| p5
  p3 -->|"consumed by"| p5
  plat --- d1
  plat --- d2
  plat --- d3
  gov -.-> d1
  gov -.-> d2
  gov -.-> d3

What it is

Domains as the unit of ownership, each publishing named data products with a stated contract and a named owner; a self-serve platform underneath so that publishing one does not require building a platform; and a federated governance layer holding only the genuinely global decisions.

The four bands correspond to the four principles, and a map missing any of them is describing something else. In particular, domain ownership without the platform band is just decentralisation, which is how most attempts fail.

When you produce it

When a central data team has become the bottleneck for every request and the proposal is to distribute ownership. Draw it before agreeing to that, because it makes the platform investment visible as a precondition rather than an afterthought.

Who reads it

Executives funding the platform. Domain leads accepting ownership, who need to see exactly what they are signing up to. The platform team, whose scope is the bottom band.

What good looks like

• Every data product has a named owner who is a person, and a stated SLO.
• Cross-domain consumption is drawn — those arrows are the contracts that matter.
• The governance band lists what is global, and it is a short list. Long lists mean it is not federated.
• The platform band names capabilities that exist today, with gaps marked.

Common mistakes

• Renaming existing teams as domains and declaring a mesh.
• No platform, so every domain builds its own ingestion and the estate fragments.
• Global governance of everything, which is the central team again with more meetings.