Document what a column means

Three people, three different answers, one column.

Beginner to intermediateRead 5 minDoing: half an hour6 steps

▶ Start

What you'll have at the end

A written entry for one table naming every column's meaning, owner, and source, findable without a Slack message

Before you start

You need

A table in your warehouse you can query directly, and one column in it that at least two people already define differently.

Not covered

Documenting every table in the warehouse, or setting up a system that catalogs all of them automatically. This is one table's columns, with the real work spent on the one people already argue about.

Leans on

Data Catalog and Metadata Management Cheat SheetCovers the metadata types and governance fields this entry's shape is built from.
Data Observability Cheat SheetCovers what a written definition also feeds once it exists, like schema and drift checks downstream.

6 steps

Where to go next

Flag a field that changed meaning instead of shape

Go there once this column's meaning stops matching its values without the name or type ever changing, the drift this entry can't catch on its own.

Checked 26 Aug 2026

Part of the Data Observability cookbook