Data Science in the Balanced Team

First presented at PyCon Ireland 2016

The goal of a Balanced Team is to share ownership and responsibility for the success of a project between team members. Each team member has specific obligations to the team and a specific area of authority. Until recently, designers, product managers and developers were the usual team members considered. In this talk I explore how data scientists can function in a balanced team and discuss my experience working as a data scientist on balanced teams at Pivotal Labs with our global clients. I consider what obligations and authority a data scientist can provide as part of a balanced team and how this situation differs from the usual jack-of-all-trades type data science work. I outline specific examples where data science can help user centric design and product management, and where the practices of lean-startup and agile development can help accelerate analysis and data science. Based on my experience building data science driven products with a global bank and European car manufacturers, I describe what we tried, what worked and most importantly what didn’t.
If you are a data scientist or need to work with one, this talk will equip you to understand how data science can be an integral part of a balanced team.

Transcript

1. Data Science in the
   Balanced Team
   Ian Huston
   

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2. Who am I?
   Data Scientist at Pivotal Labs
   @ianhuston
   http://www.ianhuston.net
   Started working with data as an academic...
   

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6. Balanced Team
   Shared Responsibility
   Act in service to the team
   Each role has obligations and an authority
   No more hero designer or PM as CEO
   More: Janice Fraser video
   http://tinyurl.com/jfraser
   http://www.slideshare.net/clevergirl/2015-balanced-teams-product-management-engineering
   

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7. Design in a Balanced Team
   “Empathizer-in-Chief”
   Obligations to the Team
   1. Understand the customer at an expert level
   2. Translate high-value needs into product
   3. Hone your craft
   4. Facilitate balance within the team
   One Important Authority
   Prioritize customer problems
   http://www.slideshare.net/clevergirl/2015-balanced-teams-product-management-engineering
   

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8. “[Y]ou need data thinking to be part of the culture and
   top of mind, not an after-thought.”
   https://medium.com/art-marketing/data-literacy-product-design-and-the-many-faced-god-cf8339e035a#.i8ry0xhqv
   

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9. Things that worked
   

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10. User Research + Data Exploration
    

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11. Enabling PM to understand DS
    

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12. Involving the whole team in data science
    process
    

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13. Data Science + Dev pairing
    

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14. Things that did
    not work
    

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15. Single Dev + DS backlog
    

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16. Arriving late to a project
    

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17. Being part of multiple teams
    

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18. Being (seen as) the magic bullet
    

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19. Data Science in the Balanced Team
    “The Voice of Data”
    Obligations
    1. Provide deep understanding about the available data and identify potential
    valuable uses/techniques.
    2. Guard against unjustified, unethical or inappropriate uses of data.
    3. Begin and continue collection of data to support future product goals.
    4. Facilitate balance in the team.
    One Important Authority
    Bring data to every product conversation
    

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20. Data Science in the
    Balanced Team Make data a central part of the
    product conversation.
    Provide data insights and
    possibilities in service to the team.
    Break down walls between data
    scientists and designers &
    developers.
    Data Science
    @ianhuston
    

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