Produced by Steve Nathans-Kelly
How do you know if you're getting the most out of the data analysts in your organization? Wayne Eckerson, president of Eckerson Group, offered a quick checklist to measure how to support the data analyst at Data Summit 2023.
The checklist included:
- Our data analysts can’t keep up with business requests.
- Our data analysts are order takers who do not work strategically with business partners.
- Our data analysts are glorified report writers.
- Our data analysts lack sufficient domain knowledge to be effective.
- Our data analysts have trouble communicating findings that businesspeople can act on.
- Our data analysts are isolated in departments and rarely interact with each other.
- Our data analysts spend more time finding and cleaning data than analyzing it.
- Our data analysts never rotate through departments or build cross-functional knowledge.
- Our data analysts lack curiosity or don’t have the time to explore data beyond actual projects.
- Our data analysts spend more time maintaining past reports than building new ones.
- Our data analysts continually reinvent the wheel and rarely reuse work from other analysts.
- Our data analysts create more reports than they decommission, creating report sprawl.
- Our analysts don’t apply the right type of analysis to business questions.
- Businesspeople don’t view data analysts as strategic partners or resources.
After adding up the number of points from the checklist, Eckerson explained that points 10-15 meant that the organization is dysfunctional.
“From an analyst perspective, [if you scored] five to 10, you have an ineffective data analyst network. But, if you scored less than five, you're doing pretty well,” Eckerson said.
Save the Date for Data Summit 2024—May 8-9, 2024—Hyatt Regency|Boston, MA!