Who uses a data pipeline?

We are often asked, ‘But you don’t do user analysis for data, do you?’

We believe that, as in any software development project, pipelines will only be successful if you understand the needs of the users.

FOR A DATA PIPELINE, THE USERS ARE TYPICALLY:

1. Business Intelligence / Management Information analysts who need data to create reports.

2. Data scientists who need data to do an in-depth analysis of point problems or create algorithms for key business processes (we use ‘data scientist’ in the broadest sense, including credit risk analysts, website analytics experts, etc.).

3. Process owners who need to monitor how their processes are performing and troubleshoot when there are problems.

Data users are skilled at visualising and telling stories with data, identifying patterns, or understanding significance in data. They may well have strong statistical or mathematical backgrounds. In most cases, they are accustomed to having data provided in a structured form - ideally denormalised - so that it is easy to understand the meaning of an individual row of data without the need to query separate tables or databases.