How Can I Get Them to Listen

Data managers need to put greater emphasis on making the link between user context and data usage.  You should be continually reassessing the motivations and needs of your program stakeholders to ensure you understand their data usage preferences. We call this developing “personas.” The audience serves as the basis for your process improvement ideas.

We manage data to prepare useful interpretations. This is what elevates monitoring programs beyond just compiling information into manageable structures for query and reporting. Pools of data require a level of internal and cross-disciplinary synthesis in order to raise the value of the data that’s already been collected, cleaned and organized. 

One approach we’ve found effective at drawing out these interpretations is bringing together data from multiple programs to create aggregated roll ups. In deciding how to draw inferences from different monitoring programs, we compare study designs and protocols, of course, but most important is understanding intent. Learning the management questions was each trying to answer sets the stage for determining how those manager personas would benefit most from a collaborative dataset.

Once you’ve asked and had answered that question, you know they’re listening.