I don't understand the juxtaposition used in your article. I am very interested in the topic. Observing my customers, the easiest self-service tool is Excel, then Excel PivotTables, then maybe PowerBI, then far in the distance other niche tools that are not touched by business people. They usually find analysts they trust. But (very) gradually they understand that touching the data is as valuable as walking the factory/office floor. 'Powerful' and 'easy to pick up' is an unsolved problem in BI. BR, Hristo
This is thought-provoking, thanks. I see self-serve as the answer to two communities. for the VPs, it's a bunch of KPIs in which they can do 1 or 2 actions, not more. That little interactivity is enough to engage/empower them in a way a powerpoint doesn't, and "might" make them a bit more independent. But the other important community is technical experts that aren't analysts. I have worked with many scientists that are extremely savvy and know the data and subject matter inside and out. But they don't know how to impute missing values, pivot, filter, summarize, repivot and then resummarize the data (not to say anything about geocoding, scraping and all the other tools that have a lower floor now). Self-serve gives these people claws in a fight they would have thought unwinnable before tools like Power BI gave them options.
Yeah, I agree that there are some folks that ask questions like analysts but don't necessarily know how to answer questions as an analyst would. But, that's typically a fairly small group of people. If teams can build three sets of tools that serve analysts, these technical experts, and VPs, that's great. What often happens, though, is build between the middle group and the VPs, frustrating the technical experts and overcomplicating things for the VPs.
If building three sets of tools isn't feasible, I think a better solution is build for the VPs, and then try to teach the technical experts enough SQL, etc to open up analyst tools for them.
This is really great to read! I couldn't disagree more :) I think we've had really different experiences... I've spent my 20 yr career in the UN/NGO/Charity world... which might explain why things are different for me. Would you like to catch up actually? I'd really like to hear more about "your world"
Huh, that is fairly different than what I've seen, and I'd be interested in learning more. Various contact info for Twitter, Linkedin, etc are here; feel free to reach out: https://benn.substack.com/about
>But this path is a catch-22. The more questions people can theoretically self-serve, the > >fewer they can practically self-serve. As you add more options, self-serve tools stop looking >like Mad Libs, and start looking like a blank document that requires people to write their own >stories in their entirety. While that’s what analysts want, it’s not what everyone wants.
I don't understand the juxtaposition used in your article. I am very interested in the topic. Observing my customers, the easiest self-service tool is Excel, then Excel PivotTables, then maybe PowerBI, then far in the distance other niche tools that are not touched by business people. They usually find analysts they trust. But (very) gradually they understand that touching the data is as valuable as walking the factory/office floor. 'Powerful' and 'easy to pick up' is an unsolved problem in BI. BR, Hristo
I'm not sure I follow - which juxtaposition doesn't make sense to you?
This is thought-provoking, thanks. I see self-serve as the answer to two communities. for the VPs, it's a bunch of KPIs in which they can do 1 or 2 actions, not more. That little interactivity is enough to engage/empower them in a way a powerpoint doesn't, and "might" make them a bit more independent. But the other important community is technical experts that aren't analysts. I have worked with many scientists that are extremely savvy and know the data and subject matter inside and out. But they don't know how to impute missing values, pivot, filter, summarize, repivot and then resummarize the data (not to say anything about geocoding, scraping and all the other tools that have a lower floor now). Self-serve gives these people claws in a fight they would have thought unwinnable before tools like Power BI gave them options.
Yeah, I agree that there are some folks that ask questions like analysts but don't necessarily know how to answer questions as an analyst would. But, that's typically a fairly small group of people. If teams can build three sets of tools that serve analysts, these technical experts, and VPs, that's great. What often happens, though, is build between the middle group and the VPs, frustrating the technical experts and overcomplicating things for the VPs.
If building three sets of tools isn't feasible, I think a better solution is build for the VPs, and then try to teach the technical experts enough SQL, etc to open up analyst tools for them.
This is really great to read! I couldn't disagree more :) I think we've had really different experiences... I've spent my 20 yr career in the UN/NGO/Charity world... which might explain why things are different for me. Would you like to catch up actually? I'd really like to hear more about "your world"
Huh, that is fairly different than what I've seen, and I'd be interested in learning more. Various contact info for Twitter, Linkedin, etc are here; feel free to reach out: https://benn.substack.com/about
>But this path is a catch-22. The more questions people can theoretically self-serve, the > >fewer they can practically self-serve. As you add more options, self-serve tools stop looking >like Mad Libs, and start looking like a blank document that requires people to write their own >stories in their entirety. While that’s what analysts want, it’s not what everyone wants.
this made me imagine a BI version of www.creedthoughts.gov.www\creedthoughts
Wow I just clicked that link.
Come at me phishers, I'm ready.