Workday's approach is simple but radical: if you want people to use trusted data, make it the path of least resistance. They build production standards into every data product from the start — business definitions, security tags, observability rules — so that by the time data reaches users, it's already reliable. The result: 6 million assets cataloged, 1,000 shared terms everyone actually uses, and hundreds of people across the company speaking the same language.
Key takeaways:
Treat data like a product with trust built in from day one, not bolted on later
Set clear production standards: no code gets promoted without definitions, security labels, and observability
When trusted data is easier to access than messy data, adoption takes care of itself
Shared glossaries and catalogs turn tribal knowledge into common language across the company
Tools like Atlan make these standards automatic, not aspirational
