How can a Data Team provide value in 3 Months?

This is based in my real life experience working as the Head of Data Team in Poplar Homes. Yes this blog post is a celebration of my 3rd month in the company. 

Being a Head of Data is very new to me. So is working in a startup company. Imagine what I got myself into. Haha! But kidding aside, this is the best 3 months in my entire career as a Data Professional for almost 13 years.

I’m not going to elaborate everything in this post (because I’m a mobile blogger pun intended), but these are the 3 things that helped me and my Data Team to provide value to the business in a span of 3 months.

  1. Data Strategy – Attack it like it’s a kind of game that needs a strategy. Why? To avoid confusion of what a strategy is. Because the goal is not just to provide a data strategy but to provide value to the business. I pretty much learned Data Strategy from Samir Sharma in his LinkedIn posts. I learned that the most important thing is to align with the Business Strategy. So in our case, the business strategy is to focus on improving the efficiency of our product lifecycle. Will talk about it in another blog.
  2. Data Architecture – Oh boy there are lots of Modern Data Stack available in the internet at moment. But the question is, which one is the best? Well it really depends. The best Data Architecture for me is having #1 (aligned Data Strategy with Business Strategy) + the simplest, easiest, tried and tested Modern Data Stack (this is where years of experience will come in handy). DON’T use something you haven’t tried before! Here’s how I setup a Modern Data Stack in 3 easy steps.
  3. Data Engineers – I think this is a no-brainer but I’m specifying it because you might hire a Data Scientist early on which I don’t really recommend. What we need at this early stage of our Data Strategy & Data Architecture are Data Engineers that can help out build the initial data model based on the Business Strategy. That’s why it’s really important to guide and encourage Data Engineers to have business understanding. Gone are the days where we build a Data Warehouse and later on knowing that it’s not what the business wants.

So there you go. The secret sauce here is in the Head of Data. Ensuring the Data Strategy, Data Architecture & Data Engineers are always aligned with the Business Strategy. Now go and provide value to your business / company in 3 months!