Data Lineage: Where Did This Number Come From?

Data lineage is the family tree of your data. Where did this number come from? What changed it along the way? Who touched it?

Most teams can't answer those questions, and it never matters until the day it really matters. An auditor asks how a figure was calculated. A customer disputes a decision. A model gives a strange answer and nobody knows which data taught it that.

Lineage is the answer, written down before anyone asks. Source, transformations, owners, timestamps. Nothing fancy. Just the trail.

Here's the rule I use: if you can't explain where a number came from, you can't defend the decision it drove. Build the trail now, while it's cheap.

I explain frameworks; I don't give legal counsel.