Communicating with Data

Chapter 9. Tailoring Your Work to Specific Departments

When you get good at communicating with data, opportunities will open up. You might well find yourself working on bigger and more diverse projects with new teams and departments.

The new people you work with will have new terminology, different data sets, and different stakeholders. As you’ve seen throughout this book, understanding your audience is crucial, and with new departments, you may not know the full context of every situation. You can address this problem by using the requirement gathering process you learned in Chapter 2.

When you step into new roles or new departments, you might even feel a bit of imposter syndrome, the sensation of self-doubt many people feel when they step out of their comfort zone and into new opportunities: do I really belong here? Try to ignore this feeling; it will fade as you build more confidence over time by continually proving the value of your work. Just remember: if you are being offered new opportunities, you have earned them. If someone else believes in you, believe in yourself! To illustrate this, let me reintroduce you to Claire, who works at Prep Air. In this chapter, we’re going to look at how her new data communication skills open up new challenges for her.

I have been fortunate to work with many types of teams and departments in my career, and I have learned some of their needs and wants. This chapter is a bit of a cheat sheet for you. It won’t tell you everything you need to ...