Your Guide to Leading Data Science Teams: Step 2 – People
TL;DR:
Building a great data team isn’t just about hiring the smartest people—it’s about aligning your team’s skills and wants with your organization’s goals and data maturity. This article explores how to define your needs, assess team capabilities, and balance hiring, training, and outsourcing to create a high-performing, cohesive team. Success depends on clear strategies, understanding your team as individuals, and setting them up with the right processes and training.
Use this worksheet to evaluate your team and stay tuned for a deeper dive into optimizing processes in the next article.
Setting the Stage
It’s a well-worn cliché that people are the most important asset in any organization. Still, the question begs asking: how do you create and foster a great data team? For that matter, what exactly is a great data team? The answer, as with many things, is—it depends.
In this article, I’ll explore how to determine the kind of team you need to meet your organization’s goals and discuss best practices for building and nurturing a successful data team.
But First, Why?
Why should you worry about formulating strategies for your data team? Surely, hiring a smart and capable data scientist/engineer/analyst and assigning them a critical project will more or less sort itself out, right?
Not necessarily. While hiring smart people is usually a good idea*, there’s a real risk that the person you hire might not be what your organization needs right now. For example, if your data isn’t well-organized for modeling, or if your organization primarily requires simple dashboards and analyses, a pricey data scientist’s advanced skills might go underutilized.
This is why understanding both your organization’s data maturity and its OKRs is critical. Furthermore, as the needs and expectations of your team evolve, how do you ensure that your existing team members can keep up—or be reallocated to maximize their impact? Clear vision and strategy for your data team are essential to answering these questions.
Ok, Great. But How?
1. Understand Your Organizational Needs and Maturity
The strongest guideposts for determining the skills and roles you need on your team are your OKRs and mission and your organizational data maturity. For instance, hiring a data scientist is unnecessary if your team only requires dashboards and analyses in the near term. Similarly, hiring a machine learning engineer won’t be helpful if the infrastructure to support their work isn’t in place. Consider the following questions:
What kinds of analyses are expected from your team? What expertise is required for these tasks?
How much data does your team have to analyze?
What is your organization’s overall data maturity? Are you still building basic systems, or are you ready for more advanced capabilities?
Example: I once hired Ben, an incredible contributor who rolled up his sleeves and delivered great work. However, in hindsight, the ROI was mixed, not because of his contributions but because his advanced skills exceeded what we needed at that stage. While his adaptability was fortunate, it’s a reminder of the importance of aligning hires with organizational readiness.
2. Understand Your Current Team’s Capabilities
You need an inventory of your team’s skills and experiences to understand what you have to work with. This inventory, combined with your OKRs and roadmap, can help you identify skill gaps and areas of underutilization within your team. Consider the following questions:
Does anyone on your team have specialized skills relevant to your work?
What processes, tools, and communication methods is your team familiar with?
Who is comfortable with the tech stack you plan to implement as you grow?
Example: At Komaza, we created a detailed inventory of team skills through discussions, surveys, and mini-tests. This exercise highlighted both strengths and gaps, allowing us to allocate resources effectively. Deloitte had a similar system where employees updated their skill profiles annually, which helped match people to the right projects.
3. Decide Where to Hire, Grow, or Outsource
You can’t do everything yourself—certainly not at speed—and so early on you’ll need to choose what you want to specialize in and what you’ll leave to others. Also, be aware that simply growing your team can create risks, especially if it happens too quickly or haphazardly, including overcapacity or perceived underperformance. Deciding when to hire, grow existing talent, or outsource is a nuanced topic, but here are a few frameworks to guide your thinking:
Where are your team’s current gaps?
Can existing team members grow into more advanced roles with proper training?
What work might be better outsourced to fill short-term needs?
What are the core skills and expertise that will be truly relevant to what you are developing, and what are ancillary skills that you may benefit from outsourcing?
Example: At Komaza, the choice was made to outsource some of the product management work to a consultant who had prior expertise delivering a forestry monitoring platform. This had the dual benefit of bringing in someone with both the domain and technical skills the team was currently lacking.
4. Get to Know Your Team on a Personal Level
Consider this as getting to know your team not just as assets or resources but actually—as people. Even if you strongly believe in the separation of work-self and personal-self, there are practical benefits to knowing your team better: It builds stronger bonds, helps uncover parallels between their motivations and your team’s goals, reveals who’s eager to grow versus who’s coasting, and uncovers personal factors that might affect performance (e.g., a new child). Combine these insights with skill inventorying to better understand your team. Consider these questions:
Why did your team member join this team?
What inspires or discourages them about their work?
What’s something unique about them outside of work (hobbies, fun facts, anecdotes)?
What are their aspirations, and do they have a clear vision for their growth?
What is one thing they’d like from you as their leader?
Example: Building these connections created incredible cohesion within our team at Komaza. It made people want to be a part of the team and enabled them to see their future in it. It also revealed hidden champions and underperformers, which became invaluable during team changes.
5. Set Your Team Up for Success with Processes and Training
This will be explored in depth in the next post, but in short, great people don’t succeed in a vacuum—or rather, they are far more likely to succeed if the conditions are primed for it. Having the right processes, guidelines, and training in place enables your team to perform at their best. Empowering team members with opportunities to grow often leads to higher engagement and better outcomes. Consider the following questions:
How are you ensuring the team has the skills required to meet their role?
How are you helping them make the right decisions and prioritizations for their work?
How are you ensuring communication and knowledge sharing is effective?
Example: At Komaza, reskilling and training team members was critical for adapting to shifting demands. Training on stakeholder management reduced friction points, while teaching data associates to build dashboards and write basic queries elevated them from rote tasks to delivering high-value insights.
But what if?
1. What If We Don’t Have the Budget to Hire Right Now?
Focus on upskilling your existing team and leveraging their potential. Identify key gaps and provide targeted training or mentorship opportunities. Encourage knowledge sharing within the team to strengthen collective skills. Consider temporary outsourcing or consultants for critical, short-term needs.
2. What If Our Team Lacks Experience in Key Areas?
Assess whether current team members can develop the required skills with training or mentoring. Pair less experienced members with external advisors or consultants for guidance. Start small with pilot projects in new areas to allow the team to gain experience incrementally without overwhelming them.
3. What If We’re Struggling to Align the Team with Organizational Goals?
Revisit your team’s objectives and how they align with the organization’s OKRs. Hold a workshop or team meeting to clarify expectations and reinforce the connection between their work and the broader mission. Adjust priorities or redistribute responsibilities to ensure alignment.
4. What If We Have the Skills But Aren’t Seeing High Performance?
Look at your processes and team dynamics. Assess whether team members have the tools, clear expectations, and support to succeed. Foster a culture of psychological safety where individuals feel comfortable sharing ideas and taking risks. Evaluate whether poor performance is linked to motivation, unclear priorities, or a lack of structured processes.
5. What If Team Morale is Low or Engagement is Dropping?
Engage with your team on a personal level to understand the root causes. Use one-on-ones and surveys to uncover frustrations and aspirations. Celebrate successes, even small ones, to boost morale. Provide opportunities for growth and make it clear how their work contributes to the organization’s success. Consider whether adjustments in workload or team structure are needed to reduce stress or monotony.
Is That All?
There’s a lot more to shaping great teams. If you’re interested in diving deeper, I recommend these resources:
The Making of a Manager by Julie Zhuo | Great for learning about general managing of teams especially as a new manager
Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek | Fantastic deep-dive on the importance of building trust in teams for long term success
Radical Candor by Kim Scott | Gives great advice on one of the most crucial skills as a leader - open, candid communication
**The WorkLife Podcast** by Adam Grant | A general exploration of science behind what makes successful workplaces
What’s Next?
Check out this worksheet for activities on skills assessments and building one-on-one rapport with your team members. Also, explore these links for guidance on assessing team capabilities.
In the next article, we’ll discuss processes and how they can complement your team’s talent to drive success.
