Drew Mooney

In Analytics you don't always get the “real“ request from a stakeholder.

Instead, you get a question like:

- Can you pull this data for me?
- Do you know why these two reports don't match?
- Can you create a dashboard with our team's metrics?

You can uncover the real request and make a bigger impact with questions like

- Why is it important that these two reports match?
- Can you help me understand how you'd use this data?
- Can you tell me more about what's driving your request?
- Is there a key decision you're trying to make?
- What goal would this dashboard help you accomplish?
- Who would use this dashboard? and for what purpose?

What other questions do you like to use?

#data #analytics #curiosity

A tough reality that no one tells you before you begin a Data Analyst job at a small company:

You are absolutely, positively, definitely going to inherit someone else's 1000-line query which is full of nested subqueries and has no comments whatsoever.

But if you were hired, it means someone believed in your ability.

- research what the query is being used for, why it matters
- break it down into smaller pieces
- rewrite it to use CTEs instead
- add comments everywhere

And just like that - you added value.

#data #analytics #sql