How Startup teams and their Data Scientists can speak the same language
By adopting a framework that enables you to make sense of your data, measure and optimise faster without the frustration
The Data/BI team is one of the most important parts of your organisation.
They can make or break a business because your data and its quality depend on them…
…and to thrive in this era, you need to make more data-driven decisions and less what Joe Blogg said decisions.
To achieve this, you need your information to be accurate, consistent and organised in a way that relates to your customer and their behaviour to your product/service.
Most of all, you need a framework that the whole team can participate in to achieve the same goal.
The data team is often asked for endless reports that never seem to satisfy management, which results in frustration and demotivation.
We lose focus when there is no framework in place, with new requests to measure come up some wanting this metric or that metric. Often management even disagrees between themselves as to which metric to work towards which is confusing, to say the least to the rest of the team.
The result being, a multitude of reports as well as self-appointed data experts within the organisation. People start creating their own dashboards, quoting their own numbers, thus working towards their own north star metric. What you have then is a lack of focus and growth is slow and stunted.
When the team cannot relate what they are doing with the ultimate goal /north star metric, it diminishes their motivation; it makes it hard to see their sense of purpose within the organisations. On the other side of the spectrum, management finds it difficult to see how what the team is doing will take them from where they are to where they want to be. Is important to have a system where all understand the part they are playing and know how they are going to reach the main goal, which ideally shouldn't be changing every week.
Therefore, we can confidently say that focus is paramount, and that exponential growth (scale) is what is on everybody’s mind, hence the name focus2scale.
When this framework is applied, it provides a solid foundation from which you can build and grow your digital product. The team knows its part in the puzzle, and management can easily visualise whether their team's activities are moving the needle.
The focus2scale framework has seven elements:
The North Star Metric
This is where the focus is, and all department, individual KPIs, and activities should point to it. It is depicted outside of the other 6 parts because it ideally it isn’t supposed to change.
The Execution Plan
This is where it all comes together, a plan that all teams understand — from the growth, development, to the data team.
Lifecycle Segments
These are the groups of users divided by where they are in their journey within your product.
Behaviour Segments
A sub-segmentation of the lifecycle segments where we divide them further by their level of activity — using this to drive segment-specific content as well as feature analysis.
Track and Protect Map
The track and protect plan is an important part of the framework. This is where your data team translates business strategy into an executable data language. The protect part of the map is how you can ensure your data is GDPR ready, for example.
Visuals
The visuals are where you can clearly see how your product is doing — often, businesses have many of these, but in this framework, we work on a more focussed approach.
KPIs-
KPIs are like your GPS navigator when you are travelling to your destination. They will indicate whether you are on track, and we base them on the user lifecycle and minimise them to approximately 6 and they are linked directly to the North Star Metric so you can remain focussed, always.
The 6 parts of the framework that are in the circular part are meant to go through consistent iterations. As the KPIs are based on the user’s lifecycle and all department KPIs and activities are linked to them, you will be able to measure and optimise.
