What to ask your agency about data modelling
Teams tend to reach for this after something has already gone wrong. If you are briefing an agency or a freelancer on data modelling, these questions are worth asking early.
Numbers get quoted in meetings long after anyone remembers how they were calculated. The practical test is whether someone new to the project could tell, in a minute, that it had been handled.
Questions worth asking
- Who will actually do this work, and have they done it before?
- How will we know afterwards whether it worked?
- What happens if it needs changing in a year?
- What are you assuming that we have not confirmed?
What a good answer sounds like
The model outlives the application built on top of it. The cost of getting this wrong is rarely visible on the day it happens. Doing this properly once is usually cheaper than doing it approximately three times.
Model what is true, not what is convenient this quarter. There is a version of this that is over-engineered, and it is worth avoiding. Most teams find the first pass takes an afternoon and the maintenance takes minutes a month.
How to tell if yours is fine
Most data problems are ownership problems that turned into technical ones. Three things worth confirming about data modelling before you move on:
- Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
- Name things the way the business names them — and you know whether that is true here
- There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped
If any of that sounds like a description of your current setup, it is fixable.