Selected Essays

• Why Should We Move Back To Data IC Role After Being A Manager?

  This is Part 4 of a 4 part series, detailing the trials and tribulations of moving from being a data IC to data manager, why we might think about going back to Individual Contributor again, and what...

  6 min read

  #data

• What Can Go Wrong When Moving Back To Data IC Role After Being A Manager?

  This is Part 3 of a 4 part series, detailing the trials and tribulations of moving from being a data IC to data manager and why we might think about going back to Individual Contributor again. Quick...

  6 min read

  #data

• Can I Go Back To Being A Data IC After Being A Manager?

  Once upon a time, there was an analyst who became a manager And they wrote an article about why they did it, and stuck with the decision, through thick and thin, the good times and the bad. And the...

  7 min read

  #data

• The Five Elements Of The Data Science Unicorn

  You pushing your Generalist agenda again? I've written before that I believe that generalists are the real data science unicorns. Especially when you are running a small company or early stage...

  6 min read

  #data

• Fewer Dashboards, More Analysis

  It pains me to say it but Business Intelligence has gotten itself a bad rep. And we're all partly to blame. It's pretty clear that to most people in the data science world, BI means building endless...

  4 min read

  #data

• Becoming An Analytics Manager Isn't A Promotion. It's A Career Change.

  So you want to be a rock n' roll star? Becoming a data scientist may be the modern tech version of becoming a rock n' roll star but no-one really seems to be talking about what happens a few years...

  7 min read

  #data

• Generalists Are The Real Data Science Unicorns

  Rarer Than Rocking Horse Droppings. I started chasing unicorns early in life. 1983. Four years old. Iveagh Cinema. Watching the first movie I ever saw on the big screen – The Last Unicorn. The...

  4 min read

  #data

• I Want To Be A Football Writer When I Grow Up

  Chasing my writing dream, catching it...and letting it go. I blame The Sun newspaper. My dad usually bought The Sun. Occasional dalliances with the Mirror or (worse) the Daily Star but his main paper...

  8 min read

  #writing #football

• Veruca Salt And The Just Give Me Everything Routine

  For those business stakeholders who can't make a single decision in their entire lives we have the #1 method for pissing off your entire data team: Just Ask For Everything. I call them the “Veruca...

  4 min read

  #data

• The Unending Creep Of The Unspecified Scope

  So who are we dealing with here? I call them the Lieutenant Columbo's. The folks who, when they get exactly what they asked for, always find “just one more thing” to stick onto the request. The...

  3 min read

  #data

• How To Deal With The Urgent! Urgent! Urgent! Boy Who Cried Wolf

  I've covered this one off at length in another article including how to try and fix the noxious behaviour but it really never ceases to grind my gears. You’ll know these people because they pull the...

  2 min read

  #data

• But This Is The Way We've Always Done It

  Something Just Ain’t Right Here You've spent days investigating something. There was this constant niggle every time you ran a report and something about it just didn't sit right with you. So, in you...

  3 min read

  #data

• URGENT! URGENT! URGENT! How To Deal When Someone Else's Poor Planning Becomes Your Emergency

  The Moment Your Blood Pressure Starts To Rocket Arrives We've all experienced the immediate stress of an email subject title like “URGENT! URGENT! URGENT!” hitting our inbox at the very worst time....

  4 min read

  #data