https://app.experiencewelcome.com/events/q3u9jZ/stages/OVfq6E
• Slow down
• Context, relationships (the stakes, how people are processing things)
• Impact Analysis - pro's and con's, mitigate (make less severe) changes
• How to communicate to Executive team members
• Stakeholders' needs, build trust, shared approach, execution plan how they wanted things to roll out
Aligning Data Priorities to Business Priorities
• Active Listening (helping to define ask)
• Ground the project for available resources and capacities (limit on compute/bits/electricity
• Translate effectively technical context to non-technical people
○ Some requests are low lift
○ Sometimes lot of effort
§ Ad-hoc- context switch from prioritizing from current task from queue
○ People really need to know what it takes to get to the answer
§ break it down, lay it all out
□ consistently until built processes are not last-minute
□ Even for executive team
§ Lift the curtain, let them take a peek the effort it will take
○ Self-serve-how to get to the answer themselves with what already lives, these are the options
§ Takes work to show people data resources and how to ask data q's
○ What does their ask mean?
§ New table
□ For non-repeatable ask?
§ Ingest data that did not exist
○ One click, overnight solution not realistic all the time
• Know the decision-makers
○ Stakeholder maps
§ Who has power to make decision and why
§ Can influence project but not decision-making
§ Allies/enemies
○ What will you need it for? Driving a particular action?
• Managing Competing Priorities
○ Understanding business context and personal agendas
§ Asking the right questions, specific need- ask, why, what, when, where
§ Understand stakeholders, understand business
§ Keep probing
○ Aim to Over Communicate
§ What are some phrases you can say, "No" but still keep stakeholder trust high
□ Understanding biz context and personal agendas
□ For me to be comfortable to say no, need to know where they are coming from and what the friction is between each other's POV
□ Trust and friction, to work through it to get to the right resolution
□ What you are trying to solve for, why approach is the way it is, and an opinion; HW to get comfortable, confidence
□ No is not one phrase but answering Who, What, When, Where, Why, How, am I missing a viewpoint
□ Stakeholder is my customer
□ Tight deadline then need to have a quick response, address quickly
□ Queue is too long, low value ask, my approach is very different than their approach, so I need to explain my approach; why
□ One pager, bullet points, core questions
§ Be proactive in communication (when doing so much) - not wait until they ask me for update.
□ Need to give details on my steps and where I am at; blockers
○ At the end, stakeholder and analyst need to go to the same place
§ Sometimes expectation and results are different
○ Start small with saying "no"
§ Is more work
§ Then when you say it comes from place very well thought out
○ Personal Agendas
§ Sometimes need to explain decision-making will cause technical debt
§ Documentation is your BFF to explain decision consequences
• What you want to do, why, how
○ Lean Start-up 3 Why's
• Building on process- Stakeholders who keep on asking low-value requests
○ Investigate, how do these requests come in and how often, is there a pattern to it
○ Are there processes to manage this
○ So simple, but what is it being used for?
§ Need process, need to formalize requests
§ Tickets need to be submitted certain way
§ Triage-what is it aligning to
§ Outlined KPI's, goals for quarter/6 months, how are my tasks aligned at this moment
○ Low-value, able to coach-up; knowledge share, coaching; know how to ask right questions and get answers on their own
○ Are there things more important for data team and stakeholders know it?
○ This is how we intake, and how we can support them
• Not everything is life and death
○ Want to immediately solve
○ Really prioritize trust
○ Shared decision, what will it take to get everyone on same pg
○ Sometimes work with them offline to make sure they are my ally
○ Timeline is sometimes arbitrary- unless something is tomorrow
○ Documentation- people will understand money, they will reconsider their task- dependencies; short- (technical debt?) and long-terms answers; options
○ People management, relationship building
§ Resonate, get buy-in to have impact
• Need to get really good at what people need
• What are their assumptions that data could do for them and where am I right now? (infra, stack, tools)
• At the end of the day, data is people
• Impact Analysis- understand questions that have not been answered and generate scenarios to answer questions