Katie Bauer!

Data scientists and data science managers, how many people are on your team? How often do you directly collaborate with your teammates, and what sorts of projects do you tend to collaborate on?

From previous roles, varied between 5-20 although we served very large orgs. My role was strategic and constantly looking for opportunities for the data scientists to show their magic. Projects cover multiple departments, daily collaboration critical to avoid duplication

20! I can't even imagine that. What was your main strategy for avoiding duplication of work?

More of an art than science but just making sure our team is well connected. There’s one person that generally receives all requests and we discuss before work gets started. Stakeholders are way too eager to ask for help whenever they can.

The eager stakeholder is both a blessing and curse Does the request-receiver have some sort of official title, sort of like a data science scrum master?

Yes a double edge sword for sure to confuse us all! Unfortunately not official title but that’s a decent idea! Currently, they’re known as the data science product manager. We tend to rotate responsibility to take people out of the firing line. What’s your environment like?