Читать книгу Becoming a Data Head - Alex J. Gutman - Страница 36

The next question you'll want to ask is, “Who does this problem affect?” The spirit of the problem is not only asking who this affects, but how that person's work will be different going forward.

You should think of all layers of the organization (and perhaps its clients, if any). We don't mean the data scientist who works on the problem or the engineering team who may have to maintain software. The Data Head needs to know who the end users are. Often, it's more than just the people in the room crafting the problem, so it's super important for you to find the people whose daily work will be affected and bring them into the meeting.

We suggest you name names. Whose work will be different if the question gets answered? If it's many people, bring in a small group to represent them. Create a list of these people and understand how they will be affected by the project. You'll want to tie these answers back to the last question.

An exercise to help you think through this is to do a solution trial run. Assume you can answer the question, and then ask your team:

 Can we use the answer?

 Whose work will change?

This, of course, assumes you even had the right data to answer the question. (As we'll see in Chapter 4, this can be a huge assumption.) But you should answer these questions and go through several scenarios where the problem has been solved. In many cases, answering these questions can strengthen the project and its impact, or may identify a project with no business benefit.