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DATA STRATEGY
A Guide To Building a Data Department From Scratch
Some practical advice on where to start from someone who’s been there before
Most resources I come across when looking for advice and best practices on how to build a data department at a middle-sized company are either about creating a data-driven organization or building a data team. However the position I found myself in more than two years ago required a more pragmatic approach:
As the first (and only) data person at an organization, how can you concretely start to introduce data best practices and build a data department?
Have you recently been asked to build a data department at a given company? Do you plan to take on this role in the near future? Or, out of curiosity, have you always wondered how an organization went from using almost no data to having a multi-person data team? If so, this article is made for you.
Setting the scene
When I got hired as the first “data person” at my current company in November 2021, I was faced with a blank field. The top management had unlocked the budget line for one data person, but the company was far from being data-driven. My manager had previously worked with tech and data roles, but his background was…
