Data Team Health Check: Are You Stuck in a Bottleneck?

I have performed dozens of data team audits and health checks - mostly for fast-growing scale-ups with up to 1000 employees.

It’s always a big box of surprises when you look under the hood of these data teams.

A recent audit of a Series D scale-up, revealed something striking: A data team of an advanced 1000-person company had:

no development environment
no testing
zero data modeling
data pipelines breaking every day
stakeholders waiting for weeks to receive replies to their requests
shadow IT everywhere

This discovery is common in many growing companies: their data function hasn't scaled alongside their business growth.

The Control-Agility Framework: A New Lens for Data Team Performance

At the heart of high-performing data teams lies a critical balance between control and agility. Think of control as ensuring trustworthy, well-understood information, while agility enables fast, iterative decision-making. Most teams excel at one but struggle with the other. This creates four distinct scenarios on the control-agility-matrix:

→ The Promised Land: High control + high agility

→ The Fortress: High control + low agility

→ The Jungle: Low control + high agility

→ The Bottleneck: Low control + low agility

Inside the Audit Process

When I audit data teams, I examine two core dimensions:

Control

Mutual understanding of KPIs and dimensions
Loading, structuring, and modeling practices

Agility

Roles and responsibilities in working with data
Alignment of the data team’s output with business goals

When I conduct audits for companies, the process typically takes 5-10 days and involves:

In-depth stakeholder interviews (executives, data team, data providers)
Assessment using the Control-Agility Framework
Development of actionable recommendations
Focus on quick wins and strategic initiatives

For companies with up to 1000 employees and data teams up to 40 people, the health checks are not very intrusive and don’t require access to any data infrastructure.

From time to time, I run audits for companies over 10k employees - these audits are typically more involved and take much longer.

The Self-Audit Tool: Measure Where You Stand

To help teams independently assess their position on the control-agility matrix, I've developed a self-audit tool with 78 targeted questions across the control and agility dimensions.

Those questions are very similar to the assessments I make during my actual audits.

This diagnostic tool gives you:

A clear score that places you in one of the four zones on the control-agility matrix
Detailed insights into your strengths and weaknesses
A foundation for improvement planning

You can access the tool here.

Real Life Audit Findings

Let me share two contrasting cases from audits I performed last year:

Case 1: The Bottleneck Trap A Series D scale-up struggled with:

Unstable data pipelines
Missing software engineering practices
Multiple conflicting intelligence products
Heavily centralized "dashboard factory" setup

Key recommendations from this audit: Establish proper software engineering principles and implement a robust data model.

Case 2: The Fortress Dilemma A Series B company excelled in technical aspects but faced different challenges:

Inconsistent KPI definitions
Lack of KPI ownership
Missing product owner role
Poor communication between business teams and data hub

Key recommendations from this audit: Establish clear data products aligned with business goals and implement a focused self-service strategy.

Take Action: Assess Your Team

Using our self-audit tool, you can determine your team's position on the Control-Agility spectrum. Scores follow a grading system from DD to AA.

For those scoring BB or above - congratulations! You're already setting the standard for data excellence!

If you score below BB, consider joining our masterclass “Create massive business impact with your data team”.

Want to take your first step toward improvement? Start with the self-audit tool and get an objective view of where you stand. Your journey to the Promised Land of Data begins with understanding where you are today.

Whenever you need me, here's how I can help you:

Data Action Mentor Masterclass: Create massive business impact with your data team.

This class is built for ambitious data professionals and data leaders. I spent 17 years building data teams for high-growth companies such as Rocket Internet, Zalando, Takeaway.com, Lazada (acquired by Alibaba), and many more. In this class, I am sharing all my lessons, failures, and successes so that you can make your stakeholders and CEO happy and accelerate your data career.

Impactful Data Teams for Scale-ups

I build data infrastructure and data teams with immediate business impact for global b2c scale-ups and grown-ups in e-commerce, insurance, fintech, and consumer subscription. My proven approach has helped dozens of scale-ups. I build the infrastructure at a fixed price and then empower the business to move rapidly from data to action. If you know a consumer internet scaleup that needs an impactful data team, hit me up!

Data Audits

I run Data Audits to support you in transforming your data team into a strong business partner. You will get a tailor-made list with action items that will help you create massive business impact with your data team.

Knowledge Base

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