When data retention is worth the effort

The advice here is unglamorous, which is probably why it gets skipped. Data retention is not free, and pretending otherwise leads to bad decisions.

Numbers get quoted in meetings long after anyone remembers how they were calculated. Assume whoever inherits this will have half your context and none of your patience.

When it is worth it

Keeping everything forever is a liability, not an asset. It is worth being explicit about, because assumptions differ quietly. Assume whoever inherits this will have half your context and none of your patience.

When it is not

If nothing downstream depends on it and nobody is complaining, it can wait. The teams that handle this well are rarely the ones with the biggest budgets.

How to decide

Deletion has to work across backups too. The cost of getting this wrong is rarely visible on the day it happens. If it only works because one person remembers to do something, it does not work yet.

How to tell if yours is fine

Data outlives the applications built on top of it, which is why the model deserves more thought than the screens. Three things worth confirming about data retention before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Retention rules should be written down and enforced automatically — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

If you want a second opinion on how yours is set up, ask.