How productive is your data team?
A simple exercise to assess the current state
Some years ago, I came across a super interesting diagram from the excellent Practical DataOps book by Harwinder Atwal. I remember the first time I saw this, I was shocked. I always knew that my data teams have spent considerable time on activities that do not contribute to value, but I never considered measuring it.
Have a look at a modified version below:
So what’s the productivity?
13/25=0.52
In this case, the team spent only 52% of their time in a directly productive manner.
Of course, this number varies, but you’ll rarely encounter teams where it is larger than 80%. And even in that case - is a 20% increase in productivity a worthwhile investment? I would say so.
In future posts, I’ll go deeper into the reasons and solutions. In the meantime, try to measure this number for your team, and check out Harvinder’s book - it’s a highly recommended read.