What's the Real Purpose of a Data Team

Metadata

• Author: Taylor Brownlow
• Full Title:: What’s the Real Purpose of a Data Team?
• Category:: 🗞️Articles
• Document Tags:: data team vision and mission, Data Team Vision and Mission,
• URL:: https://more-than-numbers.count.co/p/whats-the-real-purpose-of-a-data
• Finished date:: 2024-06-30

Highlights

Data teams are enablers

A data team that sees themselves as enablers considers data to be a company-wide service team, much like HR or IT. These kinds of comparisons can stir up images of downtrodden data teams, drowning in ad-hoc requests without meaning or purpose. (View Highlight)

We’re not making the decisions for them, we’re helping them make a decision.” (View Highlight)

Do whatever you want to do. Just be sure that once you’ve found what that magic juice is, we take that business logic you put into an Excel spreadsheet somewhere and push it back into the data platform so we keep it governed.” (View Highlight)

My one additional observation from speaking with Anders, in particular, is that this approach requires strong leadership skills in order for it not to turn into a pure service organization, or avoid an ‘us vs them’ culture. Successful enabler teams are able to stay flexible with how data is used and consumed while being firm about how it is governed, and how it fits into the high-level strategy across all the departments. (View Highlight)

2. Data teams are advisors

Many of the leaders I spoke to placed this capability above the rest. The biggest difference between this capability and that of enablement is that this requires data teams to take a far more active role in the decisions being made. (View Highlight)

“When you’re coming to a decision, you don’t only need the data, you need the insights and wisdom behind that. You also have to set up the decision in the right way. I think this kind of business and critical thinking skills is something very natural for analysts.” (View Highlight)

Perhaps unsurprisingly, these teams tend to operate within a fully embedded or hybrid-embedded model, which closely aligns analysts with specific parts of the business. (View Highlight)

can include a data science team that works closely with product to build models that directly impact revenue (View Highlight)

3. Data teams are connectors

defining and maintaining the key metrics all business teams are accountable for (View Highlight)

creating and maintaining the company growth model (View Highlight)

• being the informal link between several teams in the business • being the voice of data, reason, and rigor at all times (View Highlight)

not just reacting to the culture around you but setting and changing and challenging the conversation around you.” (View Highlight)

The traits of connector-first teams are: • usually linked with Finance or C-suite teams • has an active and experienced leader (influencing culture takes time) • more business-case focused (View Highlight)

“It’s not just a project we’re doing, it’s a product. A project has a start, a middle, and an end, then the project is done. We will never ever, ever, ever be done. There is absolutely no goal where we will have done enough. I’ve never been in a company that has harvested the entire potential of what the data is capable of doing.” (View Highlight)