#279: The Process(es) of Analytics (We Have Thoughts)

0:05[Announcer]: Welcome to the Analytics Power Hour. [Announcer]: Analytics topics covered conversationally and sometimes with explicit language. [Michael Helbling]: Hey everybody, welcome to the Analytics Power Hour. [Michael Helbling]: This is episode 279. [Michael Helbling]: Process. [Michael Helbling]: It's just a series of actions taken to achieve a particular result, but somehow it can become so much more than that in good and bad ways. [Michael Helbling]: A good analyst can tell when the same problem pops up over and over again in their work and they'll do something about it.

0:41[Michael Helbling]: And that sometimes there's not enough process in that case. [Michael Helbling]: And alternatively, you might exist in an environment where there's too much and you work endlessly and never know if you had any impact or meaning. [Michael Helbling]: So, I don't know, let's focus on the just enough part and try to make our work the best it can be. [Michael Helbling]: And that was part of my process. [Michael Helbling]: Let me introduce my co-hosts.

1:04[Michael Helbling]: Moee Kiss, how you going? [Moe Kiss]: I'm going great. [Moe Kiss]: Thanks for asking. [Michael Helbling]: Oh, it's so nice to be able to ask you how you're going, because I ask the other co-hosts, and they don't understand what I'm talking about. [Michael Helbling]: It's fair. [Michael Helbling]: Good. [Michael Helbling]: And Val Kroll, hey, how you doing? [Val Kroll]: Pretty good, Michael. [Michael Helbling]: Duh, bears. [Michael Helbling]: It's been a dream.

1:29[Michael Helbling]: Well, no, I'm trying to do a Chicago greeting, but, you know, [Val Kroll]: I like it. [Michael Helbling]: And then, of course, Tim Wilson, howdy partner. [Michael Helbling]: I'll do. [Michael Helbling]: Wow. [Michael Helbling]: Julie Hoyer, go Browns. [Julie Hoyer]: Oh, go Browns. [Michael Helbling]: Come on now. [Michael Helbling]: I'll take it, I guess. [Michael Helbling]: Hey, I'm a Browns fan. [Michael Helbling]: All right.

1:50[Michael Helbling]: Let's dive into this process discussion. [Michael Helbling]: I think, you know, Julie, I want to start with you because I think this was your idea. [Michael Helbling]: What? [Michael Helbling]: What it was. [Julie Hoyer]: I don't remember that. [Julie Hoyer]: I believe so. [Tim Wilson]: Let the record show. [Tim Wilson]: Let me check the notes from our process. [Michael Helbling]: We have a process for this. [Michael Helbling]: We recorded this.

2:14[Michael Helbling]: But I think, you know, you know, [Michael Helbling]: As we look into this sort of thing, like talk to a little bit, kick us off a little bit about where you've seen process maybe not work so well or not where a lack of process has affected you and your work. [Michael Helbling]: Maybe let's start with that and then we'll kind of like wind up from there. [Michael Helbling]: Oh, wow. [Michael Helbling]: Or if you prefer to do positive, you could give an example of where you saw a great process work and you could be like, oh, I'm so awesome that I created this amazing process, but I was gonna let you save that for later in the show.

2:48[Val Kroll]: Problems then solution. [Michael Helbling]: Transformative narrative arc for your character in the podcast. [Julie Hoyer]: All right, well, to open this up, I guess my first thoughts on process. [Julie Hoyer]: I will say it's been interesting because every client I work on, our process is slightly different. [Julie Hoyer]: You'd like to think we set up a repeatable process and we're going to come to a conclusion that this is really effective and we're just gonna keep rolling with it.

3:17[Julie Hoyer]: But every client brings kind of their own process to the table. [Julie Hoyer]: So I will say that I am really excited about this discussion because I've seen it where certain clients [Julie Hoyer]: have a ton of process and it just slows us down immensely or they want to automate a lot of the process like do everything asynchronously and you know you have to have a lot of technology and tools and logins and interfaces to like communicate between us and their team and it's amazing how like they're trying to do it for effectiveness and clarity and it slows us way down and I think a lot of times [Julie Hoyer]: It burdens us where we lose the ability to have like a personal relationship with them.

4:02[Julie Hoyer]: And then on the other extreme, when there's no process, it does feel like you're kind of like flying by the seat of your pants. [Julie Hoyer]: And sometimes it's a little chaotic. [Julie Hoyer]: So I've definitely seen the gamut, the spread. [Moe Kiss]: Sorry, Julie, when you say no process, [Moe Kiss]: Can you describe what that looks like? [Moe Kiss]: Because I also like a minor process would probably look quite different to your experience like working with different clients.

4:26[Moe Kiss]: But what does a client with their process look like for the team? [Julie Hoyer]: Ones that don't really love even like a weekly cadence touch point, they're like, we'll reach out when we want to reach out and you get like the chaotic random email. [Julie Hoyer]: And then the team is scrambling and it's a little unclear who you're exact, you know, [Julie Hoyer]: direct stakeholder. [Julie Hoyer]: Some of them are like, oh, well, I told my coworker just to directly email you.

4:53[Julie Hoyer]: And we're like, we don't know who this is. [Julie Hoyer]: Are we allowed to pick this up and do it? [Julie Hoyer]: Can we schedule time with you? [Julie Hoyer]: I now have to loop back with the stakeholder. [Julie Hoyer]: So that's kind of my experience of what I'd call no process. [Tim Wilson]: I mean, it seems like there's from like an analytical intake, there are cases where [Tim Wilson]: Like to me, one extreme is when it's assuming you have, this is a person who I am supposed to address their needs as an analyst.

5:20[Tim Wilson]: So we are going to meet and have a conversation and I will uncover the requirements and the need and the underlying problem and we'll kind of conversationally, kind of process free, gather the requirements and then I will go back and [Tim Wilson]: and execute. [Tim Wilson]: That's like no process and it's efficient or low process and it can be efficient. [Tim Wilson]: The kicker is that when you roll with that and you have different people not necessarily having enough of a discussion and then something gets missed, a timeline isn't communicated or a scope or a timeframe, I've seen it start to swing in the other direction.

6:02[Tim Wilson]: It's like, well, now [Tim Wilson]: when you meet with a, sure, sure, sure, we still want you to meet with the stakeholder, but here's the form. [Tim Wilson]: And you got to make sure that everything on this brief or this intake form or whatever it is, is sort of filled out. [Tim Wilson]: And there are times where it gets to like, but some of this stuff isn't relevant, but it's a required field, no matter what that intake is. [Tim Wilson]: And it tries to make the process, and I'm thinking specifically on kind of, [Tim Wilson]: analysis projects intake, not necessarily implementation or others.

6:35[Tim Wilson]: It can get to where, well, now you've removed judgment because you said, well, we had one issue one time. [Tim Wilson]: Let's now inject more structure into the process. [Tim Wilson]: And that's how processes become bloated, because you're trying to say, well, we want to keep shedding every possible crack. [Tim Wilson]: And now we've built something that is a cumbersome formulaic way to do something. [Tim Wilson]: So those are on my two extremes.

7:02[Julie Hoyer]: If the other side is we got to talk about every single thing, and it's very super organic, and we have nothing, quote unquote, like repeatable, like if that's the spectrum, [Julie Hoyer]: I'm going towards the secondary one, like the more organic. [Julie Hoyer]: I don't know if that's right, but I definitely prefer that over the like, oh my God, if they're like, we wanna work with you and Jira, we'll just send you tickets. [Julie Hoyer]: I'm like, get me off this flipping project, I'm done.

7:27[Julie Hoyer]: I hear those words and I'm like, mm-mm, no, no thanks. [Michael Helbling]: I have a saying, I say just enough process and no more. [Michael Helbling]: So it's just as much as you need and not more than that. [Moe Kiss]: But how do you know you've hit that? [Tim Wilson]: You don't. [Tim Wilson]: But that's that's like saying, building a motto and saying, you're going to have type one and type two errors, right? [Tim Wilson]: You're going to have cases where you have too much.

7:49[Tim Wilson]: If I still like it, it's it's okay if I don't like it too much. [Val Kroll]: Super objective. [Tim Wilson]: Scientific. [Tim Wilson]: Yeah, it works. [Tim Wilson]: Well, that, I mean, that does remind me, I mean, the quick example, and this wasn't a client. [Tim Wilson]: This was somebody who we were talking to for quite a long time about potentially being a client, the head of analytics, and they had gone down the Jira ticketing process because they felt like their team was having spent too much time having those organic conversations.

8:23[Tim Wilson]: So it's like, it's a logical understatement. [Tim Wilson]: It's a logical step to say, oh, we'll make this asynchronous and put a form in. [Tim Wilson]: I've been for years. [Tim Wilson]: I think those always end up in the same spot. [Tim Wilson]: And this is where this company was living in that they were just dying death by a thousand cuts because they were just getting requests lobbed at them and people were getting them in as fast as they could because they knew it was going into a [Tim Wilson]: a queue and they were trying to turn something into this machine that shouldn't be a machine.

8:56[Tim Wilson]: And he's like, we're just overloaded by these requests and every request we get that comes in, we're going to have 10 iterations of back and forth before we're actually done with the ticket. [Moe Kiss]: But isn't that, okay, I have been like, [Moe Kiss]: doing some serious soul searching on both planning and processing, because I am definitely, Julie, when you describe the very non-processing world, that is like my mecca where I live and operate, and it is not... By choice.

9:31[Moe Kiss]: Oh, the Colomé Colomé. [Michael Helbling]: I think there's a personality component to it, for sure. [Moe Kiss]: But the thing that I have been grappling with [Moe Kiss]: is I think that there is a process component and process is such a loaded word. [Moe Kiss]: But I'm particularly thinking we've said this multiple times now, like, tickets going in and they go in a queue. [Moe Kiss]: That to me is not a process. [Moe Kiss]: That to me is a way of working, which is not a way of working that I want.

10:03[Moe Kiss]: And so JIRA can be a way that you can manage tasks. [Moe Kiss]: The problem is when that then becomes, this is how we engage with our stakeholders. [Moe Kiss]: I violently hate this whole service desk mentality. [Moe Kiss]: I believe in data folks being business partners and I do not think submitting tickets. [Moe Kiss]: Actually, it's the right way of working, even if you want to use tickets for task management. [Moe Kiss]: I've always said team leads can decide if they want to use JIRA or any other task management.

10:36[Moe Kiss]: I don't give a shit. [Moe Kiss]: It's not my thing. [Moe Kiss]: We've now agreed as a team we're all going to use it. [Moe Kiss]: But it is more about us as a team being able to make prioritization decisions than stakeholders thinking, anything I asked where it's going to get done, it goes to the back of the queue, I can just ask for whatever the fuck I want, even if it's going to add no value. [Moe Kiss]: But I'm still processing a list.

10:58[Tim Wilson]: That's a good point. [Tim Wilson]: That's the tool for being used as an intake as part of the intake process or as a tool within the resource management and availability and prioritization process. [Val Kroll]: I was going to say, well, I was going to admit rather that [Val Kroll]: Hi, my name is Val Kroll and I'm a recovering implementing tickets in front of my analytics team person, but I will say, and Tim and I actually went a couple rounds on this over dinner one time when we were on site with the client, I do recall.

11:30[Tim Wilson]: I think there's trauma with a couple of, yeah. [Val Kroll]: With the capital T. Yeah. [Val Kroll]: Some other people who had tickets to that show. [Val Kroll]: Yes. [Val Kroll]: But what I realized was, well, so contextually, I was standing up a program for the first time ever. [Val Kroll]: And so there was also like a lot of novelty to the data that was now available. [Val Kroll]: And so there was a lot of like, [Val Kroll]: This would be interesting or could you tell me if questions right and so when i was putting that system in place what i actually realize now years later is i was actually itching more for.

12:03[Val Kroll]: It was only however many minutes into the episode before we said. [Val Kroll]: the analysis planning document, the one that Julie that I referenced. [Val Kroll]: This is probably the sixth episode where I've referenced that thing. [Val Kroll]: And so the analysis planning document, for those who have not had the pleasure, we will link it again in the show notes. [Val Kroll]: It talks a lot about what is needed from this analysis, right?

12:25[Val Kroll]: Like putting some boundaries around the hypothesis and timeframes and just kind of really [Val Kroll]: getting a broader understanding and kind of asking the business partner to be thoughtful about exactly what they're looking for and like, how is this going to help them support them? [Val Kroll]: There's a meeting coming up, whatever. [Val Kroll]: So I wanted some of that documented to help foster the conversation that always happened before we picked up a ticket.

12:51[Val Kroll]: So to your point, Moe, about like interfacing with your stakeholders, it never replaced [Val Kroll]: a thoughtful conversation as a partner. [Val Kroll]: But I have to admit that I definitely was like, oh, this is how I'll operationalize this team. [Val Kroll]: Because I had people growing my team. [Val Kroll]: It was just me at first, and then it was four of us. [Val Kroll]: And I was like, how do I manage this? [Val Kroll]: I'm not touching all these stakeholders.

13:13[Val Kroll]: So for everyone out there who's done it, just know that there's another side. [Val Kroll]: We're not shaming you. [Michael Helbling]: Hey, quick question. [Michael Helbling]: When was the last time you really unplugged? [Michael Helbling]: Like inbox zero, phonon do not disturb, toes in the sand kind of unplugged. [Michael Helbling]: With 5Tran, that dream doesn't have to wait till retirement. [Michael Helbling]: Their automated data integration means your pipelines run smoothly even when you're on the beach with a book in one hand and a drink in the other.

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14:07[Michael Helbling]: 5TRAN's got it covered. [Michael Helbling]: Visit 5TRAN.com slash APH. [Michael Helbling]: You can see an interactive demo, sign up for a free trial. [Michael Helbling]: That is F-I-V-E-T-R-A-N dot com slash APH. [Michael Helbling]: 5TRAN, data in, decisions out. [Michael Helbling]: Moe said something that I think is really important distinction, which is you can have a ticketing system, but don't use that as the means of communication.

14:34[Julie Hoyer]: Yes. [Julie Hoyer]: 100%. [Michael Helbling]: The communication happens out in another sphere, and then you manage the task, and you can communicate within it. [Michael Helbling]: Is this your idea? [Michael Helbling]: But there should be layers to this. [Michael Helbling]: So your process should incorporate. [Michael Helbling]: not just I submitted a ticket, but more like I then connected the overarching purpose for this to it. [Michael Helbling]: And then the ticket supports it.

14:58[Michael Helbling]: If you have a system like that, you put in some intake system for. [Tim Wilson]: Tickets or some sort of atomic or granular management of what is the work that we're doing has a lot of value when you look back at the end of a quarter, the end of a year. [Tim Wilson]: I mean, that I've seen as well where it's like the team keeps growing because it's just emails coming in. [Tim Wilson]: And when somebody says, what do we actually do?

15:26[Tim Wilson]: And it's like, well, let me go through the network drive folders and let me sift through my email. [Tim Wilson]: And all of a sudden, now you're not generating good data on the work that you're doing. [Tim Wilson]: Not that you're just trying to count volume of work, but sort of forcing you to think about the nature of what types of work you're doing, who you're doing it for, what value it delivered. [Tim Wilson]: All of that goes towards having [Tim Wilson]: a data orientation, I think, to the work that's being done.

16:01[Tim Wilson]: I know I fall on a weird extreme on many dimensions, but it's like tracking time. [Tim Wilson]: Even when I have not been working somewhere that I've been required to track time, even when I wasn't working at all, I was tracking time. [Tim Wilson]: But I was shifting that around to [Tim Wilson]: No one's saying anything. [Tim Wilson]: I just think no one's like, there are some facial expressions. [Tim Wilson]: That sounds normal. [Tim Wilson]: But whether it's, yeah.

16:31[Tim Wilson]: So, I mean, maybe not. [Tim Wilson]: I mean, there's teasing. [Tim Wilson]: Well, I'll stop. [Val Kroll]: Oh, no. [Val Kroll]: Why did you do it? [Val Kroll]: We're just giving you a hard time. [Tim Wilson]: Well, I'm tracking time because I will go back and say, this feels like this is taking an enormous amount of my time. [Tim Wilson]: Is it? [Tim Wilson]: How often am I doing it? [Tim Wilson]: I have to have that information somewhere.

16:52[Tim Wilson]: I mean, there have been cases where there have been time tracking that's enforced purely for billing clients. [Tim Wilson]: And that doesn't actually tell me [Tim Wilson]: some of the non-billable stuff that I do that I actually do want to know. [Tim Wilson]: I spend a fair amount of time on a podcast. [Tim Wilson]: I spend a fair amount of time on a local meetup. [Tim Wilson]: I spend, I don't, not all parts of my life, there is kind of a professional, personal boundary.

17:19[Tim Wilson]: I'm not, not tracking like, you know, quality time with my wife. [Val Kroll]: And non-quality time with your wife, you flip it. [Tim Wilson]: Non-quality time, yes. [Tim Wilson]: Two different tasks under that project. Two different codes. [Tim Wilson]: different codes, yeah. [Tim Wilson]: But I think when it goes in, I mean, maybe like Moe, how do your, it sounds like it's kind of delegated to your team, but when it comes to the work, there's always going to be more work that could be done than can be done.

17:51[Tim Wilson]: And when it comes to prioritizing and managing and that's [Tim Wilson]: Always going to be shifting. [Tim Wilson]: The priorities today are going to be different than tomorrow. [Tim Wilson]: Like how do you see that as a process by which the team doesn't just get run ragged and what to look like? [Moe Kiss]: Yeah, so I've been taking feedback on this and trying to improve. [Moe Kiss]: So there's been lots of really robust conversations probably since about, I don't know, maybe three months ago.

18:21[Moe Kiss]: And so what we've decided for the second half of this year was to do very rigorous planning. [Moe Kiss]: So a lot of data folks at Canva are more embedded in product teams. [Moe Kiss]: And so it's kind of easy. [Moe Kiss]: You have a product manager. [Moe Kiss]: We have technical program managers who help with this sort of stuff. [Moe Kiss]: In marketing, we kind of like. [Moe Kiss]: run to the beat of our own drums, so it's a bit unique.

18:44[Moe Kiss]: And we were just like, you know what, we're going to really throw everything at the wall here and see what are all the things that we know that we need to do basically in half two, what are the things we want to do, all that sort of stuff. [Moe Kiss]: And so our planning cycle was really intensive. [Moe Kiss]: And then we broke it down. [Moe Kiss]: We had some big buckets and themes of work that we wanted to do for different areas because we have one team that built tooling and some that are doing more strategic analytics and that sort of thing.

19:10[Moe Kiss]: And then we bucketed it all out. [Moe Kiss]: We had to do some really ruthless prioritization because we do have some teams that are just under resourced and it's taken too long to get headcount and things like that. [Moe Kiss]: And we went to our stakeholders and were like, this is what we're planning for H2. [Moe Kiss]: Every time you come to it, like this has all of the things you've asked us for, by the way, already baked in. [Moe Kiss]: And anytime you come to us in H2 and you ask for something that's not on this list, we're going to ask you to cut something else from it.

19:36[Moe Kiss]: And like, I mean, we had one team where we had to cut like 50% of their work just because of headcount stuff. [Moe Kiss]: And so we went through the stakeholder and it was, yeah, highly entertaining because sometimes stakeholders don't realize that they're the problem. [Moe Kiss]: They're like, oh, but like, just tell me when the team is asking for all this ad hoc stuff. [Moe Kiss]: And I'm like, that would be you, but I can't really say that quite so directly.

19:59[Moe Kiss]: But I think the thing that we're really trying to shift, like I said, I've always felt like data is like a partnership model. [Moe Kiss]: But it's like, we're not going to prioritize on your behalf. [Moe Kiss]: We're going to do this together, and we're going to come up with a list. [Moe Kiss]: And so then therefore, when you want something else, that's OK. [Moe Kiss]: And we will happily do that, but then we need to drop something else.

20:21[Moe Kiss]: And I think the thing that I've probably most enjoyed about it, which the team are pretty good at, but it's kind of solidified it, [Moe Kiss]: is even some of our teams that are like a super ad hoc and reactive, which is like the nature of their work, have gone through this process now and really been able to kind of give more thought and color to the things that they're doing that might be helping them with like a promotion or like, like these are the projects that I want to be working on as part of my growth and development plans.

20:47[Moe Kiss]: And like, yeah, it's fucking annoying, but like apparently doing process stuff is like good. [Tim Wilson]: Well, so in that specific, because what I feel like I've run into at time, like they're typically there's [Tim Wilson]: just for simplicity, say there's one analyst and they're supporting a team that has four people and a manager on it, which is super, super simplistic. [Tim Wilson]: And that sort of prioritization is done. [Tim Wilson]: But the fact is, is the two different people on that team, but more often than not, it's like two other groups or sub departments, they have their priorities.

21:25[Tim Wilson]: You know, and so when somebody comes in and says, but this is really burning. [Tim Wilson]: And it's like, well, what are you gonna, you can't just ask them what you're gonna drop. [Tim Wilson]: Cause they could say, well, yeah, drop that thing for that other group. [Tim Wilson]: Cause I don't give a shit about it. [Tim Wilson]: I mean, they not overly, but they don't like, do you have to, if that sort of cutting something happens, this is where I've never found the great way to do it.

21:46[Tim Wilson]: Do you have to keep going up the chain and keep pulling in some more senior person to say, [Tim Wilson]: Your team isn't capable of making this judgment call. [Tim Wilson]: You're going to have to step in until person X, that their thing's getting cut because person Y's thing now supersedes it. [Moe Kiss]: Column A and Column B, like generally like a team lead does have a relationship with the like court and court manager, like in this hypothetical situation, there's four people.

22:15[Moe Kiss]: So they could be like person X's thing is more important than person Y's. [Moe Kiss]: But the reality is, the manager, in most cases, is like, actually, my thing that's item A is more important than either of their two things. [Moe Kiss]: So I don't give a shit about those. [Moe Kiss]: And that's what we've started to work towards, because I think we did also really have that other format of trying to please person X and person Y. And it just doesn't work, because you end up building stuff [Moe Kiss]: that is very like or or doing analysis that's very bespoke and it serves one person and like I think the biggest like shift in our direction is being like if it is for one person ad hoc non-repeatable like not connected to a company like we're just we're saying no it has to serve as multiple teams multiple groups it like we when we build it we want to build something that's reusable or could be like adjusted for a different use case [Moe Kiss]: I don't know, but I feel like I'm like preaching to the choir.

23:11[Julie Hoyer]: At least for me, I'm working with smaller stakeholder groups where with you, like you're kind of seeing the whole like beast of it. [Julie Hoyer]: Like your scale of the team you're talking about is so different than the scale of team I work on, even if you count my stakeholders plus my internal teams, you know what I mean? [Julie Hoyer]: So it's, I was really curious to hear how you guys do manage that to Tim's point. [Michael Helbling]: Well, and I think in smaller or less-scaled organizations, Moe, what happens is people haven't faced that actual boundary.

23:43[Michael Helbling]: And so they're still trying to do all of the one-offs as if they were just as important as the structural or multi-team or business strategy-focused types of work. [Michael Helbling]: And there's nobody giving any delineation between [Michael Helbling]: Okay, this is sort of like a nice to have versus a must have and they seem equally important and people are getting run off their feet and burnt out completely in organizations that aren't trying to make those distinctions because analysts are just trying to do everything for everybody, which there's an unending amount of interest on specific topics that may or may not actually have any worth in terms of like [Michael Helbling]: the time it takes to go and pull the data together, do the analysis, present it back.

24:32[Moe Kiss]: I did actually come up with a framework, which I shared with the team, and I'm happy to share in the share notes afterwards, of when we came up with this whole body of work of things that we need to do in H2, we actually scored every single thing on there. [Moe Kiss]: And one of the most strategic impact, one of them is, I can't remember the name. [Moe Kiss]: It's like multiplying effects. [Moe Kiss]: So is this servicing one person or a team of people?

24:57[Moe Kiss]: And the last one, which actually became the most important, I called DS uniqueness. [Moe Kiss]: So we would score it a one if a marketer could pull the report themselves if they really had to. [Moe Kiss]: I would market a five if it's building an MMM and it's doing QA on the data coming from this platform. [Moe Kiss]: And only a data scientist can do that specific task. [Moe Kiss]: And so we had this kind of and we've shared it with the team now and then like when you get something and you do the eyeball check and you feel like this task is like sitting at the ones you shouldn't be doing it.

25:32[Moe Kiss]: It should be sitting at like three plus across all those three different pillars and like that's kind of how we're trying to think about like I said. [Moe Kiss]: I'll let you know in like a year if I still have a job. [Michael Helbling]: How do you score it if the question is, will the CEO wants it? [Moe Kiss]: But that's strategic impact. [Moe Kiss]: And that's actually one of the criteria of like, has like a founder or an investor asked for this, or is it connected to a company level goal?

25:58[Moe Kiss]: And then you would score that like a five, because yes, that does have huge strategic impact and that thing that we need to do. [Tim Wilson]: To me, that is having gone through various, I mean, going back years, having put in the scoring, I've always thought the scoring is like, you need to figure out, you kind of need to run organically with people that you know and trust and are kind of thinking about the business. [Tim Wilson]: And then what you're trying to do is just enough, not too much, Michael, kind of codify that and say, what really are the decision points?

26:28[Tim Wilson]: And it's like that strategic one is always gonna [Tim Wilson]: crop up, and then I do think there's a part of it that says you have to run it and have the discipline to say six months or a year down the road, is this working? [Tim Wilson]: How are we ourselves gaming the system because we're bumping up the score here because we just know this thing needs to happen? [Tim Wilson]: Even when you do the scoring, presumably you're not saying, and then you get the score and we sort [Tim Wilson]: and chug away, it's like, that's a way to, I love the way you just framed it.

26:58[Tim Wilson]: Like if you're eyeballing it and you've got ones and twos on stuff you're working on, you need to kind of stop and ask why. [Tim Wilson]: And it may be, oh, I'm falling back into a bad habit, trying to keep the squeaky wheel happy, or it may be, no, these really need to be done and this framework isn't capturing it. [Tim Wilson]: And we need to kind of make a note of that and refine our process, right? [Julie Hoyer]: Does scoping come into it at all Moee or is that like note you use the framework you talked about?

27:32[Julie Hoyer]: Yeah, because I'm just thinking like what if you do identify like the top five things that really have to happen in this team like these are things that would be the best for them to tackle. [Julie Hoyer]: But then you get to actually scoping it and this amount of work and your capacity to do the work and it's not going to fit in the time period that like [Julie Hoyer]: is realistic so then is that like a secondary part of you guys after you've done your intake and priority then it's scoping in like another round of prioritization or is that part of your to be fair it was a little complex because we did agree that we did have a [Moe Kiss]: I think we had a time estimate, but they were very rough.

28:12[Moe Kiss]: Also, because we're trying to plan out work for such a big team over a six-month period, we were also talking about tasks in days and weeks or hour blocks. [Moe Kiss]: There was a component of that, but then it would be more about if something scores really highly and this person or this team doesn't have capacity for it, but we know that it's on our list to do. [Moe Kiss]: How do we move resources or that particular task to a different team to make sure we can cover it?

28:39[Tim Wilson]: Can we shift to what happens when it gets... [Tim Wilson]: scoped and the scope is, it's always gonna be low. [Tim Wilson]: It's always gonna undershoot. [Tim Wilson]: But when something you get into it and there's a commitment to we're going to do this project and then all of a sudden you realize, oh my God, like the day to clean up for this, like we just did not see this hot mess. [Tim Wilson]: This is gonna be 4x the level of effort.

29:06[Tim Wilson]: What's the process? [Tim Wilson]: I'll say it for getting back [Tim Wilson]: to do you just keep plowing ahead? [Tim Wilson]: Say we're gonna suck it up and do it and figure it out or? [Moe Kiss]: Tim, are you asking me the question because like when did this conversation get turned around? [Moe Kiss]: Cause like I am not the process person. [Tim Wilson]: And like everyone else- You keep saying that, but you have all this, you have all these thoughts where you're like, well, here's the, here's the mental and actual and reality process step by step, how I approach this, but I don't like process.

29:38[Tim Wilson]: Let me tell you about the four-part framework we have. [Moe Kiss]: I also said to my team leads, like, here are some guiding principles, but also I'm sure of this. [Moe Kiss]: So, like, I need you guys to lean in and help, and they honestly did a phenomenal job. [Michael Helbling]: I am not the process person. [Michael Helbling]: But I think, like me, Moe, you think about process in terms of, like, the value it can create when applied correctly and given to.

30:02[Michael Helbling]: the challenges that your team is facing. [Michael Helbling]: That's the way I look at it. [Tim Wilson]: Maybe let me side rant on this. [Tim Wilson]: I don't think if it's process for the sake of process in many organizations, especially larger enterprises, wind up in that world where they're at a lady working for me who [Tim Wilson]: She didn't care if she delivered business value ever. [Tim Wilson]: As long as she followed the umpteen gazillion steps in a wildly overloaded process, she knew that was going to be her way to get ahead in the organization.

30:35[Tim Wilson]: That's problematic. [Tim Wilson]: I look at, actually, my wife's Measure Camp New York presentation about process where she's called out that it is [Tim Wilson]: You, there is a process. [Tim Wilson]: Now there are levels of how much you've codified it and documented, but everyone is following processes all the time. [Tim Wilson]: It's a matter of when an inefficiency is being identified or a problem. [Tim Wilson]: And there are lots of, you know, getting into heavy process stuff.

31:08[Tim Wilson]: There are certainly six sigmen, all those worlds to sort of really diagnose them. [Tim Wilson]: But I don't, I don't want it to turn around. [Tim Wilson]: It's like, I'm not a process person. [Tim Wilson]: Like, no, everybody's a process person, whether they, [Tim Wilson]: realize it or not. [Tim Wilson]: Like there's, I don't think you can, [Tim Wilson]: function, like you have a process. [Tim Wilson]: There's an innate organic, you run into these things all the time and there is a way of reacting to them.

31:31[Tim Wilson]: It's not like, well, on Tuesday, today I feel like we're carrier pigeons can be the way that we, you know, get intake requests. [Tim Wilson]: And on Wednesday, you know, what we should do is we should figure out what our business needs, right? [Tim Wilson]: So I don't know, maybe that's my, my, my side rant is like, recognize processes there. [Tim Wilson]: It's useful to recognize that. [Michael Helbling]: And I think what we're talking about is expanding the process out beyond the individual.

31:57[Michael Helbling]: So in other words, you take your process and you push it out across a team or across a function. [Michael Helbling]: And you say, OK, this is the way we're going to execute this all the time. [Michael Helbling]: And a lot of times, people like me who say I'm not a big fan of process, it means that I don't externalize my process well. [Michael Helbling]: That's actually what I'm trying to say is I have a process like you just said, Tim, but my process is sort of like very intuitive.

32:23[Michael Helbling]: And so a lot of times it's hard for me to sort of like document that process for you. [Michael Helbling]: So you like, if Tim was going to follow Michael's process, I would have a hard time writing it down so you could follow it step by step. [Moe Kiss]: But I think that's the like the learning that I'm having and maybe maybe Tim's right. [Tim Wilson]: We can cut this out. [Moe Kiss]: No, but there is this thing where like [Moe Kiss]: I would self describe as a person that's not really into process.

32:52[Moe Kiss]: But the thing is, like all of the thinking happens in my head. [Moe Kiss]: It's just not externalized. [Moe Kiss]: And so, like you said, I know how all these pieces of the puzzle fit together. [Moe Kiss]: And I know why I'm asked Johnny to do X and why Max is working on Y and why Timmy's tackling Z and Sarah's doing whatever and great examples. [Moe Kiss]: But like, I know why all those things are being done and how they let her out.

33:18[Moe Kiss]: I think the thing that I've really been learning over the course of this year is that's not fucking good enough. [Moe Kiss]: You can't have all that stuff floating around in your head. [Moe Kiss]: Even if that process works for you, it's not working for my team because they're like, why does task X [Moe Kiss]: Like, how does this fit into everything? [Moe Kiss]: Where does this connect? [Moe Kiss]: Like, why is this important? [Moe Kiss]: Like, oh, this is going to a founder.

33:43[Moe Kiss]: I probably need to know that. [Moe Kiss]: And so it's about me making sure that I'm like connecting the dots for them is that they have the right information. [Moe Kiss]: And that's like a growth journey. [Moe Kiss]: Tim, you said we weren't going to talk about fluffy feelings today. [Michael Helbling]: Yeah, and I love that mode because that's exactly right. [Michael Helbling]: It's like anytime you need to transfer something from one person to another, whether that's vision as a leader, whether it's analysis from one analyst to another, the production of a podcast, we have a process document.

34:15[Michael Helbling]: I guess who didn't write that document. [Tim Wilson]: One, you think there's one? [Michael Helbling]: We have multiple process documents. [Michael Helbling]: To be fair, Val, I've never actually looked at them. [Michael Helbling]: Outed. [Michael Helbling]: I've never actually looked at them. [Val Kroll]: Tim, take a drink. [Tim Wilson]: Yeah. [Michael Helbling]: That's exactly it. [Michael Helbling]: If you wanted to make sure that that process continued, you go through those steps and that's kind of the idea is like, yeah, the value of it is, okay, wow, this person is doing it really, really well.

34:44[Michael Helbling]: Let's dive in and see what they're doing and then expand that out to the rest of the team. [Michael Helbling]: And you do that all the time when you look at things like, what's going well? [Michael Helbling]: Oh, that's going well. [Michael Helbling]: Okay, let's figure out why and then expand on it. [Tim Wilson]: But not to the point that you externalize it to the point that you think now that we have the process, anybody can do it.

35:02[Tim Wilson]: I think that's the, I mean, yeah. [Michael Helbling]: Very annoying. [Michael Helbling]: Yeah, yeah. [Michael Helbling]: Yep. [Michael Helbling]: And I think that's where you get into sort of some wisdom about what's required in terms of skill and what's required in terms of steps. [Michael Helbling]: And that's a balancing act. [Julie Hoyer]: And like how much you can generalize a process? [Julie Hoyer]: I think that's where you hit the tipping point where people want to generalize a process too broadly.

35:32[Julie Hoyer]: And then it starts to become cumbersome and it's not applicable. [Julie Hoyer]: So it's like the flexibility of, the more you guys were talking to, it's like there's layers of process. [Julie Hoyer]: You have individual processes. [Julie Hoyer]: You have ones that scale to a small team, a large team. [Julie Hoyer]: There's like competing processes. [Julie Hoyer]: But it does like you have that tipping point of like where is it to burdensome because we've overgeneralized or where our processes like intersecting in not a helpful way.

36:00[Julie Hoyer]: Oh, my brain is starting. [Val Kroll]: spin down a rabbit hole. [Val Kroll]: The other thing I was thinking too, and I think this is somewhere along the lines of what you were kind of thinking about the different levels of this, Julie, is that I think a lot of times a lot of things get labeled as processed too. [Val Kroll]: I think we touched upon this already earlier with the ways of working, but [Val Kroll]: Sometimes, processes use, especially clients that we work with, to solve something that can't be solved with process.

36:29[Val Kroll]: If there's two teams that have two different responsibilities as a part of this input or whatever and they don't disagree or their motivations aren't aligned correctly, putting in a process say, you should do this by this day or you have to fill this out as a way to [Val Kroll]: control when really the alignment isn't there outside of the process. [Val Kroll]: There's no amount of like, but I put that in an email or that's in the spreadsheet, did you check that box is not going to solve too.

36:56[Val Kroll]: It's the layers, but then also the things that process tries to get thrown on top of to kind of be a band-aid in certain situations or just to [Val Kroll]: It's not always actually making the work more efficient or valuable. [Julie Hoyer]: Because Moe, even you saying how you just make those decisions, to me, that's not a process that anyone else can follow. [Julie Hoyer]: That is your problem-solving skills, your management skills, your leadership skills.

37:21[Julie Hoyer]: But to your point, the way you communicate it out to people probably could have a very clear process so that they get everything they need. [Moe Kiss]: Out of curiosity, because I feel like we're saying the P word every third word. [Moe Kiss]: And I think it means so many different things to different people. [Moe Kiss]: When you think of like the best process that you've seen, [Moe Kiss]: What does that look like to you? [Moe Kiss]: What's an example of a process that just works really well?

37:48[Moe Kiss]: I know Val had a really good example, but what about other folks? [Moe Kiss]: What stands out to you where you've seen someone do something and you're like, that works? [Michael Helbling]: My problem though is that I've always modulate the process for the situation. [Michael Helbling]: or the level. [Michael Helbling]: So like I work in consulting, so I have different clients and different clients need different levels of process. [Michael Helbling]: So I bring that level to whatever that situation is and you adapt.

38:18[Michael Helbling]: So if you're working with a company that's a highly processed organization that you're doing, much more process around everything in the work. [Michael Helbling]: Whereas if there's a leaner team that you're working with or a smaller company, [Michael Helbling]: You can just have a conversation and then get to work and everybody's on the same page and it's fine. [Michael Helbling]: There's a lower level of process. [Michael Helbling]: So I tend to modulate mine up and down.

38:40[Moe Kiss]: Yeah. [Moe Kiss]: So to you, it sounds like adaptability is the key, though, to good process. [Michael Helbling]: Yeah, absolutely. [Michael Helbling]: Because if I brought this heavy-handed, multi-step process to a smaller, more nimble team, they would just be like, why are you wasting all of our time with this extra stuff we don't need? [Moe Kiss]: But why is it wasting time for a small team, but not a big team? [Michael Helbling]: Because you don't need that level of detail or there's not that level of complexity.

39:04[Michael Helbling]: There's not that many stakeholders with differing opinions. [Michael Helbling]: Like there's all kinds of reasons why you wouldn't need to bring like all that additional artifacts into it. [Val Kroll]: Can I say, so this is actually, I have one thought that I'm not sure if you'll agree with this, Michael, but the difference that I've seen working in much smaller organizations and then like 100,000 person organizations is that [Val Kroll]: with the adaptability or the scalability I think Michael's talking about is when you're in a smaller group there's so much more that can just be like a soft contract between people because the expectations can be unwritten and when it's more people there's more variability or like you have to report things to the FDA or the SEC like then it becomes like the necessity to be more rigorous [Michael Helbling]: Yeah, there's a PMO and there's an InfoSec team and there's a procurement org.

39:53[Michael Helbling]: There's all these other interfacing organizations and structures that live in these bigger environments that you have to navigate through. [Michael Helbling]: That requires you to have a little bit more structured [Michael Helbling]: or refined process that you go through things kind of a step by step. [Michael Helbling]: So like, you know, let's say you're going to go build a dashboard for somebody. [Michael Helbling]: You know, you could sit down with a smaller company that has two or three stakeholders, the chief marketing officer and one of the people on their team.

40:24[Michael Helbling]: And you spend an hour and a half chatting with them about their strategy, what they're doing, talking about all their data and those things like that. [Michael Helbling]: You go away and you come back with version one of the dashboard a week later. [Michael Helbling]: and it's looking good and you're on your way. [Michael Helbling]: You take that exact same process and the exact same data points and you walk into a much bigger organization, you're gonna be weeks doing the discovery and the step through and all those different things until you can then get into the people that are gonna house the data and they're gonna do all the setup of that data and then you're gonna go to that and you're gonna get into that team.

40:59[Michael Helbling]: And so that same dashboard will take six times as long, maybe longer, [Michael Helbling]: to build in that environment just because of the additional process steps you need to go through to get to that endpoint. [Michael Helbling]: The actual output is nearly identical. [Michael Helbling]: Everything you said, sure, true. [Tim Wilson]: However, flip side, I mean, one, it wouldn't be the same. [Tim Wilson]: because it's likely a much more involved and more data sources.

41:27[Tim Wilson]: But recognizing a process of saying, I have a request, and I would say probably you want to define that when a request comes in, I need to establish kind of the level of effort and some form of the requirements, like in a macro process. [Tim Wilson]: So processes can go higher to lower level. [Tim Wilson]: The adaptability, I think, is spot on. [Tim Wilson]: When Moe your question of like, what's a process that I've seen work really well, I think work breakdown structures, not, I mean, they've been around for decades, come out of the project management world and people, they will bristle at them because the request is for you, someone to sit down and think through what the steps are gonna need to be.

42:14[Tim Wilson]: And it doesn't have to be perfect. [Tim Wilson]: And 100% of the time, if somebody tries to just, [Tim Wilson]: estimate the level of efforts, and I think that's 20 hours of work. [Tim Wilson]: And then if you take the same person and say, just make a list of everything that you think has to happen, and let's just put some numbers on it, and all of a sudden it's 60 hours. [Tim Wilson]: So that, I mean, I've worked at multiple, I've worked at consultancies that don't have that, but that was much more individuals, but I would still make that list.

42:43[Tim Wilson]: If I'm gonna estimate something, whether or not I ever told the client I was doing it, I would make my full on [Moe Kiss]: So, I think that is a... Sorry, but why wouldn't you share that with a client out of curiosity? [Tim Wilson]: Kind of back to Michael's point. [Tim Wilson]: Sometimes they don't... I mean, I may or I may not. [Tim Wilson]: Well, sometimes I don't want to because I don't want them diving in and saying... [Tim Wilson]: I'm going to miss on every one of those.

43:09[Tim Wilson]: The expectation is that if I have enough detail, I'm missing high and I'm missing low on enough different ones that it nets out to the reality. [Tim Wilson]: You start putting that level of detail in front of somebody who they've hired me to be the expert. [Tim Wilson]: If I say, I think this is going to take me 60 hours and they say, whoa, we can have a discussion and I can hit kind of the big points of [Tim Wilson]: you know, why it would, if they look at every line item and say, what do you mean this is going to take you two hours to review this document?

43:40[Tim Wilson]: And all of a sudden, we're having a pointless discussion. [Tim Wilson]: So I see that as a more useful, and I'm trying to think when I worked. [Julie Hoyer]: Or they want to rip out line items of like, oh, well, we'll take that off your plate. [Julie Hoyer]: And they want to then like hem and haul over splitting up the work. [Julie Hoyer]: I've run into that too. [Val Kroll]: And they're like, well, then I'll add in more hours after that to make up for what you aren't going to do.

44:02[Tim Wilson]: So I think from a process for estimating the scope, and then I would even say on the dashboard example, I am going to have a heavy bias towards doing. [Tim Wilson]: The process I will have will be as part of that discussion doing some formal wireframing because of the risk that's opened up regardless of where it is that they'll start [Tim Wilson]: Frankensteining what you've done and having some sort of an interim step. [Tim Wilson]: But it's kind of like a general one from an intake of a project of a certain scale.

44:32[Tim Wilson]: Or saying, this is an ad hoc request. [Tim Wilson]: Whatever the threshold is, this is going to take less than four hours. [Tim Wilson]: I'm not going to say that I'm going to open this tool and pull that tool and do that query. [Tim Wilson]: There's back to adaptability and judgment in it. [Tim Wilson]: But that's just my simple answer to where's a process that works well. [Tim Wilson]: I think scoping. [Tim Wilson]: work, having some steps and tools and having people understand how to use them.

45:01[Tim Wilson]: And if somebody's a savant and says they nail it every time just off of their gut, it's a weird thing for them. [Tim Wilson]: How do you, how do they prove that? [Tim Wilson]: How do you prove that out? [Val Kroll]: But just coming back, I don't think we ever resolved your thread, Tim, on like what happens when the scope blows up after you start digging into it. [Val Kroll]: So like you've, [Val Kroll]: best laid plans, you've got the WBS and right there's rounding you're in there, but you realize like, oh, shit, that's actually not the data mart where that was.

45:30[Val Kroll]: And some people was called to exactly which situation I'm referring to. [Val Kroll]: Um, but like, when do you want to like talk about how you, cause I don't have an answer. [Val Kroll]: I just want to hear someone answer it. [Val Kroll]: So is it you Tim or something else, but like, how do you, [Tim Wilson]: Mine is simple. [Tim Wilson]: I'm like, communicate early and often and say, I'm sorry, we missed on this. [Tim Wilson]: What should we do?

45:50[Tim Wilson]: And we need to rebalance as opposed to try to hide it. [Val Kroll]: But do you change the process then going forward? [Val Kroll]: Tim, I'm curious. [Val Kroll]: That's the part I was... [Michael Helbling]: not unless it's happening a lot, because that's where I get nervous that it's a typically, for me as a consultant, I usually bake into the process what we're gonna do if we run into something like that. [Michael Helbling]: So in other words, if we run into a situation where it's gonna be like that, we're gonna come to you and have the conversation and then we'll figure out what we do about it.

46:17[Michael Helbling]: So it's not like a, you know, obviously we hope it doesn't happen very often, but it does happen. [Michael Helbling]: And then you just go talk about it. [Michael Helbling]: And honestly, [Michael Helbling]: I've had in my career, like, [Michael Helbling]: A lot of those conversations, I think maybe 20% end up with frustrated clients. [Michael Helbling]: Usually people get over it pretty quick and they get back to productivity pretty quickly.

46:41[Michael Helbling]: And honestly, a lot of times people are thankful that you brought it to their attention and were upfront about it and reset expectations correctly. [Michael Helbling]: I think what I've observed over the years is there's a lot of people out there who try to fake it all the way to the end and people have gotten back a lot of bull crap. [Michael Helbling]: from people who they thought were going to give them something of value. [Michael Helbling]: So, in a certain sense, you stand out if you're just honest about it and have a frank conversation.

47:11[Michael Helbling]: Honesty is the process. [Val Kroll]: Yeah. [Michael Helbling]: Yeah. [Tim Wilson]: Well, that's part of the process. [Val Kroll]: I think so. [Val Kroll]: You think adaptability is the first thing that you think about, Michael, for an effective one. [Val Kroll]: And the ones that I've seen work well to go back to your question, Tumo, is all about expectations. [Val Kroll]: And so, [Val Kroll]: Are the expectations of me clear?

47:28[Val Kroll]: Are the expectations, you know, to my stakeholder clear, the other people have to touch the part of the process, do they know? [Val Kroll]: And so I think that kind of goes in line with what you were sharing there and communication. [Val Kroll]: But Julie, we have to talk about assumptions though, going back to the document because that's- That was the one that was there. [Val Kroll]: We have to get back to that. [Val Kroll]: Just tell us, tell us Julie, all about that and how that's helped.

47:49[Julie Hoyer]: Well, I was going to say like the assumptions one is big because if we were the example that Tim was just walking through and something like blows up, it's because we assumed that like data would live in a certain place and we would have easy access to it. [Julie Hoyer]: Everyone assumed and signed off based on that. [Julie Hoyer]: And so that document value that you didn't mention that we talked about multiple episodes. [Julie Hoyer]: It's so simple, but it really does save us a lot of pain because one of the sections we put in there was assumptions.

48:18[Julie Hoyer]: We have started to bake in general assumptions that we will list, that the data listed above is available where [Julie Hoyer]: expected. [Julie Hoyer]: You can put those safeguards in, so then it's like a soft contract almost with the client to say, for even just an analysis within a larger program that we're working on with a client, we can say, hey, this analysis, this is the exact scope. [Julie Hoyer]: These are the steps we plan to go through.

48:47[Julie Hoyer]: These are the deadlines and rough timing that we're going for under that these assumptions are true. [Julie Hoyer]: The client, we talk about it, they have their expectations set, we've agreed on it. [Julie Hoyer]: And it is where we come back. [Julie Hoyer]: And if they, if we find something that goes against those assumptions, like it's a very neutral way to bring it to them of like, we all agreed on this, now the terms have changed.

49:10[Julie Hoyer]: So let's reset. [Julie Hoyer]: And they're usually much more receptive to it. [Julie Hoyer]: Or if they come with last minute requests, it's kind of the same thing like, well, we, you know, agreed upon this. [Julie Hoyer]: If you really want to change the scope, then we have the right to change the deadlines, right? [Julie Hoyer]: Like you can't, [Julie Hoyer]: changed what's in here with no effect to the other areas, which is kind of nice.

49:30[Julie Hoyer]: So the assumptions have been like a saving grace, even though they felt so obvious in the beginning. [Julie Hoyer]: I found it was a really good exercise. [Julie Hoyer]: The more I thought through like, what am I actually assuming in my head or from experience and pain points? [Julie Hoyer]: What do I know I should list out as an assumption that I might run into? [Michael Helbling]: Yeah, experience is a good teacher on that too. [Michael Helbling]: So you pick stuff up and then you make sure to add it in as assumptions later.

49:54[Michael Helbling]: Definitely. [Julie Hoyer]: Especially if you have points where you know that the client or your stakeholder is going to be a bottleneck. [Julie Hoyer]: I like to list those out. [Julie Hoyer]: This is based on the dependency that you guys are able to provide XYZ by such and such time. [Tim Wilson]: Oh, I've totally done that. [Tim Wilson]: When they're like, oh, we can get that data for you. [Tim Wilson]: That's available. [Tim Wilson]: You can't access it.

50:13[Tim Wilson]: It's in, yeah, yeah, well, that's easy. [Tim Wilson]: We can get that data. [Tim Wilson]: It's like, OK, the assumption is going to be that you will get that data. [Tim Wilson]: I'm wondering if Moee's got a reaction. [Tim Wilson]: On data science projects or on other projects, do you run into cases where... Do you document assumptions or... The projects where the scope is risky, how do you... [Tim Wilson]: Manage? [Tim Wilson]: Is it setting expectations?

50:41[Tim Wilson]: Is it documenting assumptions? [Tim Wilson]: Is it frequent check-ins? [Tim Wilson]: Is it all of the above? [Moe Kiss]: There's definitely documentation of assumptions. [Moe Kiss]: I would also say in most cases, those assumptions would be stress tested. [Moe Kiss]: Not always with the folks that you think, we will often use finance for stress test assumptions, which might surprise some folk, but often because it's to do with our marketing strategy, which is also part of our global strategy.

51:13[Moe Kiss]: We will work with finance about how we thought about this particular market correctly or our investment here. [Moe Kiss]: This is how we're thinking about it. [Moe Kiss]: Does that make sense, essentially? [Moe Kiss]: My preference is always to include assumptions. [Moe Kiss]: If not in the body of the doc, but at least in the end of the doc, I'm pretty ruthless on that. [Moe Kiss]: But yeah, that's definitely a part of it. [Tim Wilson]: But that's a simple little potential step of the process.

51:42[Tim Wilson]: It's two things. [Tim Wilson]: It's one, having somebody [Tim Wilson]: check the assumptions, do they seem reasonable? [Tim Wilson]: Are there assumptions that are missing here? [Tim Wilson]: Those may be two different parties or you may ask the same. [Tim Wilson]: I don't think too often of actually checking the assumptions with a third [Tim Wilson]: party, but that makes going to the team that actually has that say, hey, we assume we're going to be able to get this data and this form from this, and that's going to be reasonably straightforward.

52:14[Tim Wilson]: We want to check that assumption before we commit to doing this, asking finance a question. [Tim Wilson]: I don't think I've done that, but now I want to. [Moe Kiss]: Oh, I see what you mean. [Moe Kiss]: I think it's a little bit different internally though, right? [Moe Kiss]: Because have I got it right that when you say, you check an assumption of like, does this start exist in this place? [Moe Kiss]: Yada, yada, yada, you're going to clients.

52:39[Moe Kiss]: Whereas like, it's very different for our team because we could just look it up. [Moe Kiss]: So like, I don't know if there needs to be the same rigor on that specifically. [Tim Wilson]: Plenty of in-house cases where they're too different. [Tim Wilson]: I'm thinking pharma, you've got a marketing analytics team, and you have a commercial insights team. [Tim Wilson]: They're the same company. [Tim Wilson]: They roll up to the same, but boy, there is an assumption that [Tim Wilson]: I mean, even though I've been working with those sorts of teams externally, it's the internal people that say, well, oh, yeah, you'll have to go to this other internal team to get that.

53:15[Tim Wilson]: And it's like, well, your internal can't you reach out. [Tim Wilson]: They're like, we can reach out, but it doesn't matter. [Tim Wilson]: They're not going to. [Moe Kiss]: But I think a lot of that happens informally, firstly. [Moe Kiss]: But secondly, I think what I find with the folks in our team, it's less assumptions about whether something exists and it's more about how it's calculated. [Moe Kiss]: So whenever we have a table or whatever, there will always be a readme that explains it.

53:39[Moe Kiss]: But some people write really shit, readme's, that make it really difficult to understand how that metric is actually calculated. [Moe Kiss]: And sometimes they're like, [Moe Kiss]: the amount of precision or ways it could be misinterpreted. [Moe Kiss]: That very much happens, I would say, informally, where folks, you can see who the coder is, you would go to the coder and be like, am I thinking about this metric correctly? [Moe Kiss]: I would say that it's completely informal, but I also am not doing the work, so I don't know.

54:08[Moe Kiss]: I don't think that would be documented. [Tim Wilson]: I've, again, watched teams where they're like, oh, we have this. [Tim Wilson]: One team says, well, there's this flag in this data, which is the same thing that's like a segmentation flag. [Tim Wilson]: And it's like, well, what is that actually? [Tim Wilson]: We assume that it means these things. [Tim Wilson]: And they're like, yeah, yeah, we think that's what it means. [Tim Wilson]: It's like, but do you know?

54:25[Tim Wilson]: And you may find out much later in the process that, oh, you had an assumption or maybe business stakeholder had the same wrong assumption and it's only somewhere down the path [Tim Wilson]: that because something looks funny and they go to another internal team and they're like, well, that's not what that means at all. [Tim Wilson]: So I think it's going to vary. [Tim Wilson]: I'm clearly now obsessing about one specific client that was just constantly triggered.

54:55[Tim Wilson]: Internal teammate didn't know what internal team B [Tim Wilson]: was doing, and that was also had some very sensitive data. [Tim Wilson]: But then you're, I think there's a spectrum all in those lines, but any sort of assumption, you know what, Julie, like you were calling, our assumption is we have an assumption that at these checkpoints, we will get feedback from you within a couple of days. [Tim Wilson]: I mean, there are assumptions that are sort of setting expectations for what the, [Tim Wilson]: the business partner will do that is saying, we're assuming this will happen and it's kind of a way for them to say, well, yeah, you can do that except for I'm going to be on PTO for three weeks.

55:35[Tim Wilson]: It's like, well, I'm glad we validated that assumption because that's going to make it hard to pull this off. [Tim Wilson]: Yeah, we've all got one of those. [Michael Helbling]: All right, we need to wrap up. [Michael Helbling]: I'm gonna throw all of you a big curveball right at the end, which is this. [Michael Helbling]: Everything we've just talked about matters even more now because of AI. [Moe Kiss]: Man, no. [Moe Kiss]: I mean, AI is really good at process.

56:02[Moe Kiss]: I just think it's very good at. [Michael Helbling]: No, you have to understand your process and manage it effectively to be able to incorporate AI effectively. [Tim Wilson]: No, it's always fucking mattered. [Tim Wilson]: And now, sure, if people want to say, well, now with AI, you've got to do it more, it is always mattered. [Michael Helbling]: You do. [Michael Helbling]: I'm just saying it has always mattered. [Michael Helbling]: But now people want to leverage things like AI, and it's not going to work unless they have their process in place.

56:27[Julie Hoyer]: So Michael thought that was going to be a nice closing and instead of Tim just agree with me. [Michael Helbling]: You know, you want to. [Michael Helbling]: All right. [Val Kroll]: Well, I would Michael, you said earlier, you disclosed that you're a person who doesn't document your process. [Val Kroll]: So I could see where you're coming from on that comment. [Michael Helbling]: I'll leave that there. [Michael Helbling]: Yeah. [Michael Helbling]: As you try to work with things like AI, it forces you to be like, oh, I need to extrapolate my process out more cleanly if I actually expect the AI to perform in the way I want it to.

57:10[Michael Helbling]: It's a thing that opens your eyes to, OK, yeah. [Michael Helbling]: Whereas before I could just. [Tim Wilson]: Those poor, those poor humans. [Tim Wilson]: Yeah. [Tim Wilson]: Those poor fucking humans who were reporting to you or like driving driven up the wall. [Tim Wilson]: That's why I said, I'll leave it there. [Tim Wilson]: And you're like, but now it's important. [Tim Wilson]: I could just yell. [Michael Helbling]: I could just yell at them, Tim.

57:29[Michael Helbling]: Yeah. [Michael Helbling]: And they'll change your behavior. [Michael Helbling]: You can yell at the AI. [Michael Helbling]: It'll change his behavior and tell you how awesome you are. [Michael Helbling]: The AI will be like, oh, I can see how angry you are about that first thing. [Michael Helbling]: I'll do that. [Michael Helbling]: But I'll still make the exact same mistake over again. [Michael Helbling]: Anyways, all right, we need to wrap up.

57:47[Michael Helbling]: And if you've been listening to this show, I'm sure you have your own thoughts about process and its place in our world of analytics. [Michael Helbling]: We would love to hear from you. [Michael Helbling]: And the process for doing that is reach out to us on the Measure Slack chat group or on LinkedIn or email at contact at analyticshour.io. [Michael Helbling]: And I don't know if all of you know this, but we've been putting our shows up on YouTube as well as we've started putting out little snippets and shorts of like little parts of the show that you can find on our YouTube channel at Analytics Power Hour on YouTube.

58:20[Michael Helbling]: So go subscribe and like the videos. [Michael Helbling]: That's a thing we want you to do for us. [Michael Helbling]: That will help our process. [Moe Kiss]: That will help our KPI. [Moe Kiss]: That helps YouTube. [Moe Kiss]: Sure. [Michael Helbling]: That will help. [Michael Helbling]: That helps YouTube's process of promoting us to more listeners out there, which then helps you by exposing you to the network and wonderful community of analytics people that all our fans of this show, which we appreciate.

58:50[Michael Helbling]: All right. [Michael Helbling]: And of course, I think I speak for all of my co-hosts with the exception of Tim. [Michael Helbling]: No, I'm just kidding. [Michael Helbling]: But I say that no matter what your process, keep analyzing. [Announcer]: Thanks for listening. [Announcer]: Let's keep the conversation going with your comments, suggestions, and questions on Twitter at @analyticshour, on the web at analyticshour.io, our LinkedIn group, and the Measure Chat Slack group.

59:22[Announcer]: Music for the podcast by Josh Crowhurst. [Announcer]: Those smart guys wanted to fit in, so they made up a term called analytics. [Announcer]: Analytics don't work. [Charles Barkley]: Do the analytics say go for it, no matter who's going for it? [Charles Barkley]: So if you and I were on the field, the analytics say go for it. [Charles Barkley]: It's the stupidest, laziest, lamest thing I've ever heard for reasoning in competition. [Michael Helbling]: And it's making a bald spot on top of my head.

59:48[Michael Helbling]: And... That's what's making the bald spots? [Michael Helbling]: So, yes. [Michael Helbling]: Yes, Moe. [Michael Helbling]: That is what's making it. [Moe Kiss]: I can't even tell a fucking joke because it's like 30 seconds delay and you're all frozen, so I don't even know if it was funny. [Val Kroll]: Uh, well, we are laughing. [Val Kroll]: Yeah, it was funny. [Val Kroll]: I'll be good for the shorts. [Moe Kiss]: I used to cry about analytics all the time.

1:00:22[Val Kroll]: Still do. [Val Kroll]: I have a shirt that says I can cry at work. [Val Kroll]: I wear it on stage. [Tim Wilson]: This is not a fucking EQ episode. [Tim Wilson]: What the hell? [Tim Wilson]: I'm about to have internet issues. [Tim Wilson]: Just to get out. [Tim Wilson]: You guys are breaking it up. [Tim Wilson]: What is this? [Michael Helbling]: Now it's my turn. [Michael Helbling]: Let's do a quick 20 minute episode about process and call it a day.

1:00:50[Val Kroll]: That's all the time we have. [Michael Helbling]: Oh, look it up. [Michael Helbling]: Jump right into it. [Val Kroll]: Keep crying about it. [Moe Kiss]: It feels weird that I'm the only one who's drinking. [Tim Wilson]: Rock flag in its process all the way down. [Val Kroll]: Sorry, I left on top of that.