Discovering the tenets of high-impact data teams

A new reality

Over the past year, it’s clear that the game has changed for data teams. We used to live in a world where zero interest rates let us invest like crazy in infrastructure, and hire the team of our dreams without a second thought. But now, in 2024, things feel very different. Budgets are under the microscope, hiring is flat or declining, and data teams have to prove their worth more than ever.

This led to a lot of chatter in the data community about ROI. I’ve seen plenty of ideas floating around about reducing dashboards and monitoring database costs etc, but these ideas often feel fragmented and piecemeal. There’s no overarching framework that describes at a strategic level the areas of responsibility and focus that the data team should focus on.