Implementation Journey & Readiness

This chapter is for customers involved in implementation and governance, not for deep ETL developers.

Foundation Setup – High-Level View

The Foundation Setup is your "CDM bootstrapping" phase:

  1. Client Entity & Attribute Mapping (Weeks 1–2)
    • Understand your source systems and marketing data marts.
    • Map your entities and attributes to CDM’s conceptual model.
    • Result: Interface Mapping Document – the contract between your data and CDM.
  2. Bespoke Pipeline Build (Weeks 2–3)
    • Build ETL to bring data from your sources into LDZ in CDM format.
  3. Metadata Population (Weeks 3–4)
    • Populate metadata tables with:
      • Entity and attribute definitions
      • Source → target mappings
      • Data quality rules
      • Lineage rules
  4. ETL Code Generation (Weeks 4–5)
    • Generate LDZ, RDV, DQ, lineage, and orchestration code from metadata.
    • Output is deployed to DEV and tested.

Phased Delivery

After Foundation Setup:

  • Phase 2: ETL Development (Weeks 5–8)
    • Optimize generated code
    • Add robust error handling, restartability, and logging
    • Prepare runbooks
  • Phase 3: Testing & Validation (Weeks 9–10)

    • End-to-end testing: Source → LDZ → RDV → 360

    • Data quality and volume testing

    • UAT with business teams

  • Phase 4: Production Deployment (Weeks 11–12)
    • First full production loads
    • Monitoring and validation
  • Phase 5: Ongoing Operations (Post-Deployment)
    • Stay in a metadata-driven mode: new subject areas, attributes, and 360 views come from metadata and controlled extensions.

Implementation Readiness Checklist (Condensed for Users)

Before claiming "CDM is ready", you should be able to tick:

  • Source systems and attributes documented and understood
  • Interface Mapping Document created, reviewed, and signed off
  • Data quality rules identified and configured in metadata
  • PII attributes identified and classified for governance
  • All metadata tables created and populated, with no integrity gaps
  • Code generator configured; LDZ, RDV, DQ, lineage, and orchestration code generated
  • Sample data successfully flowed through LDZ → RDV → 360
  • Data quality and lineage verified end-to-end
  • Documentation complete and under version control
  • Teams trained on:
    • How CDM works
    • How Customer 360 and Campaign 360 are built
    • How to consume them