Dear Stakeholder §
Highlights §
- When you ask us for help, tell us what you’re trying to achieve. Don’t just say “I need this piece of data”… tell us that you’re trying to achieve this higher level goal that you believe will be enhanced or achieved by X outcome, where you could use data to make a more optimal decision or enrich your product. (View Highlight)
- -serve data is, by nature, meant to deal with relatively simple requests - if the question you are trying to answer in one table or graph is beyond “I want to see this metric/s split by these dimensions, possibly with some table calculations on top like running totals”, then the chances are you need help, where we will build you something more advanced. (View Highlight)
- Not every data person knows the business like you do - they have to know a lot of other things. Some Data Analysts and Analytics Engineers may know some parts of the business very well, perhaps as well as you, but it’s rare for any data person to know their whole business to a great degree of detail. Data folks are trying to align the world in the data systems AND the actual world, this is rarely (read never) straightforward (View Highlight)
- Question whether the work you are asking for is worth the total cost. Data resource is scarce, and often what you think may be a low cost piece of work is actually much higher. Be clear about whether this is a one-off piece of work or something that will need to live on. (View Highlight)
- Data infra work can, should and often does have a long-term positive ROI in being a multiplier on future capacity or capability. It also increases work satisfaction in the data team - in my experience, data folks are neat creatures… they want their repos and workspaces to be as clean as possible. Ignoring data infra work for the long-term is perilous, as it results in lower efficiency, lower satisfaction in the data team… a recipe for turnover and failure. (View Highlight)