Tell me What you Want, What you Really, Really Want: How to Identify the Real Business Question

Believe it or not, we get hired to answer business questions! But what is a business question? This talk will present a template to help uncover this, even if a request is "simple". We'll learn how to connect the company's growth strategy to a request, uncover the context of why something needs to happen, what specifically needs to happen, and how to go about it – before we do any development. The framework will help us become more strategic, and help us pivot from reactive to proactive insights. This way, each deliverable will become an actionable data product – and we'll avoid coming up with the best answer… to the wrong question!

Business question

Data products

Effective communication

Stakeholder management

Product development

Scaling data teams 

Effective Communication

Conference on Statistical Practice (CSP) 2024