Data Tips #22 - Organisation: Surrounding roles
The roles that interact with the data team daily - product owner, business expert, business translator, architects - and where they should sit.
Today I am following up the last organisation article with a look at some of the roles surrounding the data team: roles that have a daily interaction with the team.
In some organisations these roles sit inside the team, and in others outside of it. It often depends on the size and culture of the organisation. In many cases one person holds two of these roles at the same time.
Product Owner. The product owner manages the product backlog containing the features and requirements the product should fulfil. The PO works closely with the business translator, business expert and data expert to make sure the right data is used and the right business logic is applied, resulting in a product that meets the business need. In many larger organisations the PO sits in the data team rather than in the business.
Business expert. The person who actually knows the process the data describes. Without them, definitions drift and the team ships something technically correct and practically wrong.
Business translator. The bridge between the business problem and the data solution. This role is the difference between a use case that gets adopted and one that gets demoed.
Architects and platform roles. They set the direction so that individual use cases add up to a platform rather than a collection of pipelines.
The point is not the org chart. The point is that these competences are present, named and available - whoever they report to.
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