Following a framework when executing a data project could help reduce downtime, plan ahead, and have an established process in the business others could follow.
Framework
- Investigations
- Catch up with the business requirement (BR) solicitor
- BR documentation by the solicitor
- Background
- Previous process
- Key links to reference documents
- Acceptance criteria
- Understand previous process and value to be created
- Check data sources and documents for previous or similar processes
- Data quality observations
- Data security
- Solutions Implementation
- Create data analyst project documentation
- Identify sources for new process
- Catch up with BR sponsor/solicitor to manage expectations
- Create new process
- Reconciliation/Change management
- Hypothesis around issues or success derived from new process
- Extra insights generated from new process
- Confirming or discarding hypothesis with solicitor or stakeholders
- Document new process
- Data governance
Catch up with the BR sponsor/solicitor
- Get an overview of the value to be created
- Get overview of areas of the business that will be impacted
BR documentation by solicitor
- Having a worded request written down could immensely enhance understanding and remove possible grey areas. The documentation should contain:
- The background of the request
- How the previous process was carried out? Who does what?
- Link to the reference documents on the previous process
- A clearly detailed acceptance criteria for the solution to be created
Understand previous process and value to be created
- Aggregating knowledge gathered from the catch-up and BR documentation by the solicitor to get an overview of the value created by the previous process and the potential value the new process could create
- Meeting with stakeholders around the BR to get a more detailed understanding of the process
Check data sources and documents for previous or similar processes
- What system or systems was used in capturing the data used in the previous process
- Where is the single or multiple source of truth data for the previous process
Data quality observations
- Is the data entered accurately, are there missing values, how frequently is the data updated?
- Does the business logic correlate with the logic used for the features
- Catch up with stakeholders to discuss observations
Data security
- How was the data secured? Who had access to the data? Are the people having access to the data meant to have access to the data?
- Can a similar or better security be replicated using a new process
Create data analyst project documentation
- Create a new documentation that will be more detailed to the execution of the project. Use the documentation from the BR solicitor as a starting point.
The documentation could contain:- Background
- Previous process
- Key links: Project tracking tool (e.g. Jira or Asana) | Previous process related documents | New process related documents | Data governance | Background reference
- Data requirements containing the features and business logic required to achieve the BR
- Key observations
- Reconciliation/Change management
- Acceptance criteria
- Activity notes (if required)
- Create a ticket on a project tracking tool (e.g. Jira or Asana)
Identify sources for new process
- Are the sources of data only from systems, or just manual, or system + manual
- Can a direct connection be made from the system to the BI Tool so the data can be ingested directly from the system
- Can a power app be made for manually entered data so the data can be ingested from the power app
Catch up with BR solicitor to manage expectations
- Meet with the BR solicitor to discuss based on your investigations, what can be achieved and what cannot at the point in time. This could be a continuous conversation.
Create new process
- Start building the new process using the available data analytics tool that can be better used for the process
Reconciliation/Change Management
- Is the values from the newly built report equal to the previously built report
- Is the values from the newly built report different from the previously built report due to data quality issues
- Are the definitions of features from the newly built report what was intended by the business
- Catch-up with stakeholders to discuss usability and impact of new process for the BI report
Document new process
- Document the new process for generating the report using the BI tool
Acceptance criteria
- Newly built report on BI tool generated same or better report than spreadsheet
Data governace
- Define similar or new data governance measures that have been put in place
Codes
- Document codes similar to that used on the spreadsheet report that were use on the BI tool
- Document new codes for new insights where applicable