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The first week back after a great trip away to the hills and it’s been a busy one.
The Women in Data Science learning event with Equate was a big part of the week. We delivered day one of the event and I was invited to speak on the final day to share my story of how I came to be working in data. Speaking to the amazing attendees, who are just beginning to build their careers in data, I found myself reflecting on some important words to me:
They are all intertwined, but each is important to me and had impact throughout my career. There’s a lot that I want to say on them, which I feel will be a future post. So keep an eye out!
It has been a busy week on a number of projects, though some have been challenged by an age old problem: getting access to the data! You can plan everything out in detail, but the reality is that getting to your data can be a slow process. The main cause of this tends to be the governance aspect. It’s hugely important and as such, we make sure that all our projects have clear reviews of their data usage and plan for activities such as a Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA). This means that the right thing is happening with the data throughout the project. But it takes time and that can result in gaps in projects while we wait on the paperwork. But we’re getting better at filling those gaps, and that’s partially because…
One thing we try to do at all stages of our projects, and our work in general, is to learn from the stuff that maybe doesn’t quite work as well as it could. We like change! What may seem like small adjustments actually make such a difference to what we do. It’s a far less daunting jump than making a massive change at once and means we can quickly see the impact, be it good or bad
Our team recently expanded again, and we were delighted to have a new software engineer Dymock Brett join us. As a graduate of both a data and a software engineering bootcamp, he’s bringing a great mix of skills to the team, and he’s already got stuck into a couple of projects.
Working in a small business has both amazing highs (did I mention the two projects we won last week?!) but it comes with its challenges. One of these is that sometimes we ask the team (and ourselves!) to take on broader requirements than their role might naturally have. I personally have always loved this in any role I’ve done, and I hope the team enjoys the opportunities it brings for them too. That brings me all the way back to those words I mentioned at the Equate session!
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