Analytics Anonymous

Scoping analytics work w/ David Jayatillake

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How much time will you need for this new analytics project? You might want to underpromise and overdeliver.

In this episode I talk with David Jayatillake (Chief Product and Strategy Officer at Avora.com) about scoping analytics work.

Key takeaways:

  1. Scoping analytics work is hard, because it involves a lot of exploration and back and forth. Questions often evolve with the knowledge we gain about the data. Don't try to estimate effort in days, but simply group tasks by t-shirt size: S (super easy, less than 1 hour), M (we fully understand what we need to do, less than 1 day), L (effort unclear, could be days or weeks).
  2. To understand the data, we need to understand the metadata. Technical aspects like tracking implementation, lineage, freshness. But also business context such as outages, one-off events, seasonality, usual drivers of change. To make this metadata available together with the "main" data can unlock a lot of value.
  3. Analyses are never really finished, there's always a follow-up question. Great analysts anticipate this and "over-engineer" their solutions to allow stakeholders to explore more.
  4. The goal of self service is not to eliminate work for the analysts. The more data you make available, the more questions you will get. And that's a good thing!

    5. Some tools we talked about in this context:

    • Avo (tracking plan management)
    • Monte Carlo (data observability)
    • Atlan (data catalog)
    • Lightdash (Looker alternative on top of dbt)

      • We also shared our favorite sources of inspiration:

      Podcasts:

      • Analytics Engineering Podcast
      • Data Engineering Podcast
      • Analytics Power Hour
      • The Right Track

        • Blogs, newsletters:

        • Analytics Engineering Roundup
        • Benn Stencil
        • Sarah Krasnik
        • Stephen Bailey
        • Prukalpa
        • Mikkel Dengsøe
        • Emily Thompson

          • Shitposts:

          • Pedram Navid
          • Taylor Murphy
          • Josh Wills
          • Seth Rosen

            • And of course you should subscribe to David's newsletter!

            Find David and Valentin on LinkedIn.

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            Analytics AnonymousBy Valentin Umbach