> Is it possible to do the latter, but still have end up with a well-curated source-of-truth for your data?
It's important to get the core centralised data infrastructure up and running (even if it's dirty af) as that helps with the bulk of the data work.
The oft quoted not completely true but kinda true statistic is that 70% of data work is finding, cleaning and storing the data. Analysis and modelling is the easy bit.
You could do it the other way around. Hire some data people in each team and get them to meet up every once in a while.
But I'd wager the central data stuff that makes everyone's life easier will get pushed back behind the "urgent" team work every time.
#ConwaysLaw
Edit: it's possible to do both btw. E.g. Have a bunch of centralised data engineers that do the heavy lifting stuff. With data scientist/analysts embedded in teams doing the fine grained modelling stuff. It's not a binary choice (once things are up and running).
> My (uninformed) impression is that data-driven is responsible for rather a lot of rot.
I agree! I was talking to someone else (not a tech head) the other week and realised why they hate tech so much... User interfaces that just... Don't work.
Showed him a terminal cli and he went nuts over it.
Then again, we're two kinda weird ye olde "back in my day" kinda people... So...
Interesting. I'm a bit of a hybrid, CLI/GUI user. There are things that I find easier to to in a CLI (or with text in general) and things were a GUI is more natural.
CLIs are finicky and force you to think in terms of text, whether it is appropriate or not. GUIs can be more expressive and haptic, but are typically very idiosyncratic and can get in the way of things.
The data-driven approach to UI seems a bit crazy?
If I think about the problems of any UI, I think in terms of communication, intent, learning, psychology and aesthetics. All of those things are human to human or human to computer related issues.
I think data-driven (as in statistical data derived from user behavior) approaches are or can be useful in terms of "what" to present, prioritize and so on. But much less so on "how", because I think this should be based on experiences derived from direct interaction and needs to be induced by creativity.
And I mean creativity from both sides, the implementer and the user. One thing that CLIs generally do better is to provide composable tools within a adaptive and simple system (pipes, text etc.), whereas it is hard to impossible to let GUIs talk to eachother and compose them to a user tailored whole.
I think we should empower "non-technical" users with the freedoms and sound principles we have come to enjoy ourselves, instead of letting statistical data dominate their experience.
It's important to get the core centralised data infrastructure up and running (even if it's dirty af) as that helps with the bulk of the data work.
The oft quoted not completely true but kinda true statistic is that 70% of data work is finding, cleaning and storing the data. Analysis and modelling is the easy bit.
You could do it the other way around. Hire some data people in each team and get them to meet up every once in a while.
But I'd wager the central data stuff that makes everyone's life easier will get pushed back behind the "urgent" team work every time.
#ConwaysLaw
Edit: it's possible to do both btw. E.g. Have a bunch of centralised data engineers that do the heavy lifting stuff. With data scientist/analysts embedded in teams doing the fine grained modelling stuff. It's not a binary choice (once things are up and running).
> My (uninformed) impression is that data-driven is responsible for rather a lot of rot.
I agree! I was talking to someone else (not a tech head) the other week and realised why they hate tech so much... User interfaces that just... Don't work.
Showed him a terminal cli and he went nuts over it.
Then again, we're two kinda weird ye olde "back in my day" kinda people... So...