I hope your week has been as fruitful as mine. I finally cleaned up all the pipelines in Azure Synapse and merged all the branches for our team at work. It was stressful because our previous contractors left so much junk in there, and I'm glad it's over. 

I couldn't find any publications on Medium that really fit what I write about so I made my own publication! 

Reach out if you're passionate about delivering a world-class stakeholder experience in data analytics and publish with me!

This week we discuss a common problem: 

How to Get Feedback From Stakeholders?

Demo in real time with them.

What does it mean?

You work in front of them.

You might think it’s funny that I have to paraphrase the first sentence. However, I’ve suggested that to developers when they run into issues with stakeholders. They don’t seem to understand me.

They’d rather suffer through the back-and-forth emails than deal with the problems head on.

I guess I’d never understand why people want to overcomplicate their lives. However, I’m only here to support you. It’s up to you to make that decision.

This is my tried-and-true method. I actually consider it my secret weapon.

There are basically 3 main scenarios you’ll run into.

Business Analytic Dashboards:

Get your draft dashboards ready after gathering technical requirements. Bring them to your stakeholders. Through screen share or in person, encourage them to tell you what changes they’d like to have and give you instant feedback.

It can be intimidating at first. You might be slow. However, this is the most efficient way to get to the most tailored dashboards. You can practice it with your manager or a colleague first.

Say no to back-and-forth emails.

Say no to cryptic suggestions and off-point implementation.

Always be on point.

For Data Science Projects:

It’s still doable despite the fact that there might be no visuals involved. After having sufficient requirements to work with, build a draft model with the necessary data loaded and a few scenarios tested.

Bring your draft model to your stakeholders.

Test and show the results with them in real time.

Walk them through what you’re doing at a high level. Explain your rationales, and how you try to answer their business questions.

Listen to their questions.

Answer in simple terms.

Dos: “Our model gives us the green light that our data can be used to predict XYZ with 50% confidence. I’d like your assessment based on your field experience and to help me evaluate this model with me.”

Don’ts: “The P value of this regression model is not less than 0.05 or less than its adjusted threshold. Therefore, we cannot reject the null hypothesis. Please tell me what kind of accuracy you’re looking for.”

Seriously, explain in plain English. Practice doing that. It took me a while to get it, but it’s worth the time!

Decide on the details of the model specifications together.

Show them how their decisions impact the models.

For Ad Hoc Requests Involving SQL:

You write real-time SQL queries with them. In software development, this is called paired programming. Usually, you do this with a fellow programmer. However, this is with a stakeholder. You might wonder if this will confuse them further. It won’t unless you talk in jargon.

They ask you a business question.

You write a query to answer that question.

Dos: “I understand you’d like to know the member months for your Medicare plans and see how stable it is over time because you suspect we’ve has lost some members. You want to figure out why. First, I’ll find out the member months for each of your Medicare plan by counting the members using the plan IDs…”

Don’ts: “I’m going to select column plan IDs and then just count months by plan IDs. This is the column I use to group it. Wow, it gives me so many rows of data. Maybe I need to left join on another table. What kind of table is that? Wait, I use the wrong table. What years are you interested in again? What’s the plan IDs range?…”

Again, it might be intimidating to program and demo in real time.

However, I live for efficiency.

Back-and-forth email threads are not worth the time.

Practice direct and real-time communication now. Stop hiding behind the email threads. Pick up the phone and call them. Do video meetings.

You’ll enjoy strong relationships with your stakeholders because they know you’ll give them exactly what they need.

You’ll become equal partners, no longer just skilled employees.

If you like me to

1) guest post on your platform,

2) provide copy writing service, and 

3) help with data project management.

Feel free to book a discovery call via Calendly here.

I'm also on Medium. Read more here: 

Join Medium membership and read more of my articles! https://medium.com/@mo.villagran/membership

Medium does share membership earnings with writers like me. Appreciate the support!

If you love what you read, give me a shoutout here:

I'm now available for podcast guest appearances! You can find all my details and get in touch to book interviews via this link below.

https://www.matchmaker.fm/podcast-guest/mo-villagran-f84572?utm_source=social&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=profile

If you'd like to give better presentations at work and hone your public speaking skills, let Christopher transform you into star speakers. 

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