Why DataOps teams are essential for any growing business

In the ever-evolving landscape of business, data stands as a living entity, always changing according to market trends and consumer needs. Each data point, even the outliers that deviate from the norm, holds immense value, sometimes more than the predictable trends that conform to the bell curve. It’s easy to say statistics are simple - just run it through a program and it spits out exactly what you need. Not so. Computers are helpful, even necessary, but what is required more are the people behind the screen. To quote my quantitative research methods professor in grad school, “The data don’t know.” By which she means it takes a person, or often a collaborative team effort, to accurately interpret outcomes. This is where a DataOps team is needed.

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The purpose of DataOps engineers is to streamline data efficiency, mitigate numerical errors, and interpret trends in the distribution to ensure accuracy across databases. These engineers catch any mistakes before information goes through the company pipeline. It’s a collaborative effort to ensure managed databases are reliable and valuable (Willis, 2023). To put it in visual terms, I like to think of the Pixar film Wall-E. Wall-E himself is valuable, but when he first boards the spaceship he is contaminated, grungy, and no one knows what to do with him. That’s our raw database after collection. We can think of neatfreak M-O (the “Microbe Obliterator”) as DataOps, cleaning our database not just upon collection but ensuring its quality throughout analytical processes.

Image Credit: Pixar Films

A business fortified with a robust DataOps team achieves more than just a comprehensive grasp of collected data; it gains the power to anticipate the trajectory of value evolution over time. It’s also fun. I taught quantitative methods and multi-level modeling at a graduate-student level and nothing was more delightful than seeing a student’s experiment work and find statistical significance to their findings. Experimentation and innovation are the core values behind DataOps, and it’s that passion that is foundational to a company in a technology-driven environment.

In conclusion, a DataOps team plays a crucial role in modern data-driven organizations by promoting collaboration, agility, and automation in data management processes. By implementing DataOps practices, companies can leverage their data more effectively, expedite informed decision-making, and stay competitive in today's data-intensive business landscape.

Citations:

https://www.montecarlodata.com/blog-what-is-dataops/ (Willis, 2023).