How to Design an Effective Data Intake Process

As your organization grows, your data teams will face an increasing barrage of requests from internal stakeholders. These requests can come through various channels such as Slack, emails, meetings, and direct messages — making managing and prioritizing them challenging. If your organization faces this issue, we have best practices to help you design a streamlined intake process so you can efficiently organize and respond to your data requests. We’ll share those best practices in this post.

Managing the Data Demand

Data teams frequently receive diverse requests, from simple data pulls to urgent dashboard fixes. With these ad-hoc requests, traditional Data Engineering and Data Science functions begin to feel like DataOps. These demands can quickly accumulate, leading to an overwhelming workload and difficulty determining where to start. A centralized intake process can help manage this influx effectively.

Benefits of a Centralized Intake Process

Implementing a uniform, automated intake process offers several advantages:

• Transparency: Clear visibility into all requests.
• Efficiency: Streamlined response to requests reduces
  context-switching.
• Clarity of Scope: Well-defined requirements from the outset.
• Prioritization: Focus on high-impact deliverables.

Implementing an Intake Form

One effective method to centralize and automate the intake process is using a form (e.g., Google Forms, Microsoft Forms). With a more modern data stack consider using a Slack channel with automated workflows. You can then have the Slack workflow record answers to Google Sheets. Then, you can automate this to gather initial requirements from stakeholders and feed them into a project management tool like Jira, Notion, Asana, or Trello. Having Slack workflows start your intake form allows for collaboration and commenting within Slack.

Example Intake Form Questions:

• What type of data request is this (data quality issue, analysis request, data capability request)?
• What business question(s) are you trying to answer?
• What problem(s) are you trying to solve?
• What is the urgency of this request?

While a form helps gather initial information, follow-up with stakeholders may still be necessary to refine the request’s scope.

Using Project Management Tools

We recommend surfacing scoped requests in an organization-wide project management tool. This approach ensures that all stakeholders have access and can track the progress of their requests. Avoid using tools that may create barriers for non-technical stakeholders, such as GitHub issues, which require additional skills and accounts.

Keys to Success:

• Make all tickets stakeholder-facing and prioritize them clearly.
• Communicate regularly with stakeholders about requirements, blockers, and progress.
• Share updates on what you’re working on within each sprint.

Task Templates

Whether or not you use an intake form, employing a template for project management tasks is a best practice. Example questions for a task template might include:

• What does this enable? What value does this provide?
• What does success look like?
• What is the minimum viable product (MVP) or V1?
• What is the ideal team composition for this issue?
• Who should review or QA this issue when complete?
• Any other relevant context or information?

Socializing the New Process

A new intake process may initially be met with resistance from stakeholders. It’s important to communicate the benefits clearly and involve stakeholders in the transition. Here are some steps to ease the transition:

1. Trial the new process with a small group before a full rollout.
2. Maintain clear and consistent communication about the new process.
3. Socialize the process in small groups, one-on-ones, and meetings.

Iteration and Feedback

Lastly, you must create a data intake process that’s standardized enough to organize yet flexible enough to handle various requests. Be open to iterating on the intake process based on stakeholder feedback. This shows that you’re listening and willing to improve. However, balance the frequency of changes to avoid confusion and maintain stability.

By implementing these strategies, your data teams can manage requests more effectively, ensuring that high-priority tasks are addressed promptly, and stakeholders remain informed and satisfied.

As with any new processes, there are nuances and best practices that we’re excited to share with you as you create them. Set yourself and your data teams up for success as you build new data assets and maintain your teams’ Data Ops capabilities.

Want help creating a best-in-class data intake process? Contact us. Our data experts can share more details about our approach to data operations and use it to ensure a successful intake process for your organization.