How to Describe a Database to a Non-technical Person
Use analogies whenever possible.
What Is a Database?
I’ll show you how to help your stakeholders understand what a database is. Everything needs to be communicated in simple terms with a non-technical audience. Otherwise, you’ll lose their attention and trust faster than you can build it.
You take what you know for granted.
Most stakeholders don’t know what a database is.
You need to figure out their baseline understanding before you start a project. Otherwise, it’d be a very painful session for both parties.
Real Story
My team and I were trying to figure out how to automate a data-pulling task. I wanted to know what type of databases my stakeholders were using. To me, it was a matter of figuring out the database schema and the login information. Once we get that, we can automate this via the Azure pipeline. Simple, so I thought.
To my surprise, the meeting didn’t go well. The stakeholders couldn’t understand what we were trying to help them with.
“Where does your data come from?” I asked.
They didn’t seem to understand my question.