Pipelines that pass tests but break silently
Failures surface weekly when a downstream report goes blank, not immediately when a row gets dropped. Observability is the missing layer. Without it, the team cannot tell the difference between a bad row and a bad pipeline.
Architecture that scales on a slide deck but not under load
Tutorial reference architectures look great until the team hits real volume. Ingestion latency, query timeouts, and cost surprises follow. The fix is usually not a bigger cluster, it is rethinking the data layout and access pattern.
Data consistency across systems that were never meant to talk
The CRM, the data warehouse, the operational store, and the legacy system each hold a version of the truth. Reconciliation is a manual job. Single source of truth is harder to establish than to declare.
Compliance and access controls layered on after launch
Row-level security, audit logging, and access governance get added after the platform is in use. Retrofitting them is a quarter of slow work that compounds with every new use case.