/data-team-handbook

Whether you're an IC, manager, or director everyone plays a role in running a successful data team. But it can feel overwhelming learning all the skills required to keep a data team on track.

You can try to learn everything on the fly and by yourself but the more you can learn from others whether it be mentors, videos, books, articles, etc.

But there is still likely one problem.

🤔 Where To Start?

One of the problems we face in the world today isn't a lack of information but too much information. So below I put together a list of books, articles, and videos that you should read or watch.

Now, there are still a lot of articles and pieces of content here. But I view this as more of the page of resources that you can return to when you have specific problems. Thus, I have broken this resource list down by problems vs by type of resources.

Legend

Below the content is a mix of books, articles and videos and I wanted to give a legend to notify the reader which was which. The emojis listed below are said legend.

  • 📚 Book

  • 📝 Article

  • 🎥 Video

Table Of Contents

Resources

New Manager - Making The Switch From IC

When you're making the switch from IC to manager there are so many new challenges you'll need to take on. That's why this section contains mostly books because I believe there is a lot to cover and most of it can't just be covered in a 1500 word article.

How To Help Your Team Grow In Their Career

One of the goals as a manager is to help the ICs you manage grow. Luckily, there is a ton of great content you can share with them. Below is a great list of mostly articles focused on helping individuals grow.

Project Management

Now whether you're the one managing the project or you just need a sense of how to help your team keep projects flowing, here are a few great pieces of content you can look through to improve your project management and estimations.

Culture

I ended splitting culture and team organization and management(the section below) because they did feel different in terms of how they can impact your team. One is how the team is generally organized and the other is how the team feels and is driven.

Team Organization

How teams are organized impact the way we communicate and operate. Below are several pieces of content that review the ways you can organize your teams.

Talent Acquisition And Retention

Hiring and retaining talent is an important aspect of being a manager. You need to be able to assess candidates with varying skills and backgrounds as well as create an environment that makes employees want to stay.

Onboarding

When you do hire someone or when you start a new role its great to have a smooth onboarding process as well as a plan for your first 90 days. That's why I picked the articles below that both review onboarding as well provide content for the employee who is just starting.

Communication

It goes without saying that communication is a very valuable skill in any role. Even if you're the most technical person, if you can't communicate the goal of your work or help get other people on board your project will likely move slower or perhaps never even get started.

Influence

There are several great writers on Substack that focus heavily on influence. The reason is whether you're an IC or a manager the ability to get buy-in from other teams or work with them to ensure that your project goes the right way is crucial. It can be the difference between your project and team moving forward or continuing to be stuck for the next 6 months.

Templates And Guides

I'd actually love some more templates, so if you have any feel free to send them over!

Data Infrastructure

Other

This last section is a mix of articles that range from focusing on how to calculate productivity or perhaps how not to, as well as some other pieces of content I didn't feel like had a specific category.