Creating a Data-Driven Enterprise with DataOps

Appendix A. A Podcast Interview Transcript

This is a transcript of a conversation between Qubole cofounder and CEO, Ashish Thusoo, and O’Reilly’s Jon Bruner.

Jon: I’m here today with Ashish Thusoo. He’s the cofounder and CEO of Qubole. Welcome on.

Ashish: Thanks, Jon.

Jon: We’re talking today about building a data-driven culture, which is something that you’ve done at Facebook and it’s something that you think a lot about now at Qubole. Could you tell us a bit about what it is to have data-driven culture?

Ashish: Yeah, sure. In my point of view, data-driven culture is a combination of processes, people, and technology that allows companies to bring data in their day-to-day conversation. Traditionally, when data was not available, a lot of decision-making in companies, both at the technical level, as well as the strategic level, would happen through gut feeling, through intuition, where there will be some expert in the room saying that, “I understand this landscape and this is what we should do.” I think over a period of time, what has become clear that along with intuition, you need to augment that with testing those intuitions and those hypotheses with data. That is what a data-driven culture enables.

Companies that augment that intuition and gut feeling along with testing through data and then using data to arrive at certain decisions whether for tactical purposes or strategic purposes, those companies that create that type of culture essentially become data-driven companies. ...