Your first step toward a high-performing data team

Data has a success function and a decision function.

99% of the work a data team does should connect to one of these two things.

• Measuring Success

• Increasing Certainty in Decisions

These are two core functions of data. They rarely overlap. And there is rarely justified work outside these two areas.

Measuring Success means tracking progress toward organizational outcomes. It answers the core question: “Are we closer to our desired outcome now than we were before?”

Increasing Certainty in Decisions means specific decisions have been identified and data is leveraged to increase the confidence and certainty in the decision. It answers the core question: “Which decision is most likely to move us closer to our desired outcome?”

Every story, task, dashboard, Jira ticket, pipeline, and database query should attempt to support one of these two core functions.

If you look at your data team’s tasks this week and can’t identify how they connect to one of these two you have a problem.

Either

• You don’t have success metrics defined (and so you can’t measure progress)

• You don’t have a practical strategy for making decisions. So you just throw data at people and hope they use it the next time they are faced with a dilemma.

Both are crippling.

I’ve got spots available in a half-day workshop tomorrow. The core part of the workshop focuses on defining success and making decisions. It’s your first step to building a high performing data team.

I’m here,

Sawyer