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.