Field notes
Lineage notes that survive staff handovers
Perfect automated lineage is rare in mid-sized UK organisations. What works is a short, maintained note per critical dataset: source system, owner, refresh cadence, known quirks, and the reports that break if it stalls.
Store the note next to the transform definition, not in a separate knowledge base that drifts. Pull requests that change a model should update the same paragraph.
Capture quirks with dates. 'Null ship_date means cancelled since Feb 2024' outlives hallway explanations.
For assessments we ask teams to produce lineage notes for their top ten tables before deep architecture reviews. The exercise itself surfaces undocumented joins and shadow spreadsheets.
Handover day then becomes a walkthrough of those notes rather than a marathon of screenshare archaeology.