The Data Stack Show - The PRQL: Data Team Diversity & Maturing Data Ops

Episode Date: March 25, 2022

Eric and Kostas preview their upcoming conversation about data ops and diversity with Prupalka of Atlan.

Welcome to the Data Sack Show prequel. We just got done talking with Prakalpa from Atlan, and it was a really interesting conversation. We talked about, there are two things that stuck out to me. One, we talked a lot about data ops and metadata, which is really interesting. So I want to ask you about that. One thing that she mentioned, though, to give our audience a little teaser, she mentioned a dynamic that stuck out to me about data teams. So she used the example of a sales team. She said, usually a sales leader has been a salesperson before, and now they're leading the team. And because of the different roles you have

on a data team. So, you know, she kind of talked about a mature data team. So you have, you know, engineers, analysts, data scientists, et cetera. There's inherent diversity on, you know, a mature, large data team that doesn't have the same dynamic of people having sort of had the same job and rising through the ranks, which was really fascinating. And she talked about that both as an advantage and a challenge. But Costas, we also talked about data ops and metadata. What did you think about her definition of data ops? She was very good in giving definitions in general. I think if there was something that I really enjoyed, like during our conversation was like how we managed to take each one of these terms that we keep using again and again and again,

and she would give like a very to the point and simple definition of what each one of these terms is supposed to be, right? Now, DataOps and in general, I think operations in this space, industry, whatever, it's still something that's under definition, right? And another point that she made is that things change very rapidly in the data industry.

So I have a feeling that if we talk with her again, like in a couple of months, maybe things will be a little bit different. But outside of this, yeah, like today, I think like what she said was very accurate. Now, what needs to change, what can be improved, and how DataOps can become a discipline on its own, that remains to be seen. We didn't get DevOps in software engineering for a very long, long time. It's not like we didn't do the tasks that DevOps are doing, right?

We were doing that. But you need to reach a critical point where, let's say, the discipline becomes an entity on its own. I don't think we are there yet, but we definitely have some leaders in the space that they can lead the way to make it happen. And Atlan, I think it's one of them. Yeah, absolutely.

Well, definitely check out the upcoming episode if you want to hear really good thoughts about data ops, what that means, and also data teams and how diversity is a huge asset to data teams. And we'll catch you on the next one.