The tools analysts use today were all built for a particular purpose at a particular time. But these same tools are holding us back. Now is the ideal time to step back and see what of these legacy tools we carry with us, and what we leave behind. The Life of an Analyst Given the…

dbt has fundamentally changed how most data teams work. It lets them create, and maintain complex data transformation models that power nearly every dashboard, report, and insight within an organization. While the Count canvas is already a valuable way to explore and debug your dbt models, today’s launch significantly improves…

Today we released the ultimate guide to dbt — a one-stop-shop for anyone hoping to learn what the dbt hype is about, pick up some curated tips from experts, or anything in between. You can see the guide here. The guide is best viewed on your desktop. If you’re on…

“Those numbers aren’t right.” I’m not sure there is another phrase capable of eliciting as much rage, exasperation, and anxiety from a data person as this one. It is an instant dismissal of hours or days of hard work, an attack on our abilities and talents, and a reminder that…

What’s the purpose of dashboards in 2023? — On April 9, 2020, I published an essay called “Dashboards are Dead”. I wrote it mainly to vent my pent-up frustrations as a data analyst, and yes, also to take on the most popular data tool at the time: the dashboard. To my surprise, a lot of people read it…

The one-stop shop for all your data hiring needs. Today we launched the ultimate guide to hiring your data team — a labor of love, research, and collaboration to bring together the best insights and wisdom around hiring a great data team. See the guide here. What makes hiring difficult? It’s impossible to underestimate…

Re-framing the problem you’re probably already trying to solve. — Over the last year, I’ve noticed a shift in the way data teams describe their world. People are still rightfully concerned with data quality, creating robust pipelines, and presenting good numbers, but increasingly they are realizing that even if they’ve done all that, it’s not enough. The clean data, in…

All the cool kids are late to the party, right? — I know we’re already markedly in 2022, but I thought it was still worth sharing some of my predictions on what we can expect in Data & Analytics for this year. These predictions are largely the result of a conversation with some members of my team last month during a…

In all the debate about bringing agile to analytics, we may have just missed the point — In 2001 when 17 developers met up in the Wasatch mountains of Utah to discuss how to improve the way they build software products, I doubt they imagined that in 20 years' time a community of neither software developers nor product builders would be so passionately debating their work. Yet…