What use is Data without Consumers?

I’ve been dealing with data for the past 21 years (I realize that makes me old, so please do not point this out) and most of that time I’ve been dealing with the Microsoft Stack. 

For large chunks of that time it feels like I have been in conflict with the actual people who use the data.

This is usually because either it doesn’t show what they want it to, they don’t understand what it represents, ‘it’s just plain wrong!’ or what they want simply isn’t there (this ignores the ‘they have access so I want it too’ complaint which is a different article in itself!).

As data custodians it seems that we are very rarely on the right side of situations and often seen as blocking things for no good reason. Sometimes there may actually be good reasons, but consider this, if there was no one to consume the data which we look after, there would be no need for us. 

To have a successful data ecosystem you need engagement from all quarters.

When I started in my current role, one of the first things I did was to review what work my team did and where that work came from, we then broke the work streams down into process flows.

We worked through the process flows and introduced additional steps, that based on our observations, we felt would improve outcomes, not just for my team, but also the departments we served.

This involved adding concise story writing sessions to fully document the requirements and also define the testing and validation criteria. This key point involved the buy in from the various product owners and they did, because they could see the value that this would bring to their data.

In the last sprint my team achieved a perfectly clear board, having worked through the cards added for that sprint and also finally clearing the long term blocked cards due to improved processes and also relationships with the Product owners.

This was a major milestone for everyone involved and it made me so proud of what they had managed to achieve.

The thing is we didn’t get there just through our hard work, it needed the product owners to support what we were trying to do and really engage with us.

Not only do we have a high performing team in Data engineering we now also have good relationships with our Product owners and also really good communication channels.

Good data isn’t a solo effort, although it has felt that way sometimes for me!

Good Communication is as important as the data itself.