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Click here to read Part I, incase you missed it.

90 days goes by fast. You are running a sprint. You need to think about things but have little time to do it. If you step into one of the following pitfalls, you may not get out or at best, you will lose a shoe. Staying with the analogy, running a sprint with just one shoe will not help you break any records. You may injure yourself or even get disqualified from the race. (Note to self - this analogy is quite good!)

Keep doing what made you successful before

This is the old "sticking to what you know". It got you here so it is tempting to keep doing it. Because the context and assignment is different, and the job more visible, it is different. People will question your choices and challenge you. And if you did not explore all the scenarios, be careful as you may be overlooking critical elements. Picking the right path is really eliminating the wrong ones if not just that. No path will ever be perfect, so you have to be ready to defend your choices, and you may not be as familiar with the best (or least worst) one. Don't fall into the trap of sticking to what worked before. 

Action now

Don't fall prey to "action imperative". The wrong actions can amont to a lot of rework or opportunity costs. Don't gamble or go the trial-and-error route. Understand all the strengths and weaknesses you need to contend with and identify all the opportunities and threats facing you BEFORE you act. As we mentioned in part 1, you do need to act fast, but to take a tennis analogy, better to hit an ace than win an exchange that tires you out and shows your opponent weaknesses he can take advantage of later. Take another breath or two and concentrate. It will be worth your while.

Doing too much

Accept that there are limited budgets and that you should not plan to overstretch your team from the start. If they enjoy their work, they will give you the extra mile when it counts. In football, whether you win 50-12 or 25-12, you still win. There will be unknowns so you have to allow for contingencies. A 30% contingency is advisable: 15% is the best practice, and the other 15% is the extra that people will ask you to do - for no extra budget, of course - people like your boss. Try not to say no to your boss. So do not commit to too much because despite all the good work you are doing (see part 1), there will be surprises. You can only be ready for this with contingency, but you probably don't want to label it that way, FYI. Commit to less, deliver all of it, and give a few extras. This goes hand in hand with the next pitfall.

Set the wrong expectations

Of course you say. But look at all the work in part 1 you need to do to even begin setting these expectations. And you could have tripped three times before getting here (this is pitfall #4)! I have worked in consulting most of my career and I will say it now even if I seem biased: get outside counsel now. Your business partners do it all the time with the Big Four, with their lawyers, their marketing agencies and their financiers. They do so because they want to turn every rock, they do not want to be surprised and they need to be backed up by experts. At this stage of the process (first 90 days) this kind of advice has the best return for the least investments - maximum leverage. The value is very high. Make sure you see clearly and consider everything BEFORE you begin setting expectations. Consulting firms have frameworks to make sure nothing is excluded from the discussion and all relevant decisions are taken. How do you sell this to your boss? Data has become too critical not only to strategic advantage but to survival. Your competition is probably getting the right advice. Your organization cannot afford to keep striking out and not getting on bases.

Having "the answer"

I knew a consultant who taught courses in dimensional modelling for years. He had already helped another company setup a sales data warehouse. When he was offered a Data Engineering Director role in another company, in his mind he knew exactly what to do. He hired an army of data architects with experience in star schema modelling and Azure/SQLDW because that is what he saw was as successful in his previous role and his new company had a "cloud first" strategy (he had setup a SQL Server DW before). This approach is particularly risky before a proper assessment is done. 

You may find, too late, that data is messy (more than usual that is), that the same data gets updated and becomes more complete over days or weeks, which creates quality issues, and that "sales" are not the same depending on what needs to be included in the calculation based on the business question of the day or the use case. You may later realize, to your ever-growing pain and sadness, that the business people are very data literate and they do not need nor want the data relationships to be be pre-ordained by you and your team. So here you are creating lags and delays to prepare the data, but the business needs the data fast and there are anyway many "data spanners" in the business that curate the data for the business units they serve. 

Maybe there will be some star schemas, but what is needed here is a new data platform that puts some of the data preparation in the hands of the business and changes the role of the IT group. This was a long-winded example to bring home the point that assuming you have the answer is likely the most "junior" mistake you can make. 

Focus on or learn the wrong things

The scope of your intervention is wider than when you were an individual contributor, and therefore there is a lot of learning to do. It is natural to want to spend more time on the things that we have more experience with or that interest us more. After all, if it is an area you know well or are passionate about, at least you have that on your side - no one said a promotion meant you had to suffer. True. But you know where I am going with this. As a manager or director, you have to assume that the area you would naturally be attracted to may not be the area that needs the most attention, and you and your team may not know much about it. 

To get things done quickly, like 90 days, you need to surround yourself with expertise with an external view and a have a process to help you sift through everything - and the current team cannot help you at the moment. They should be involved, but as a leader, you need to make sure they are led in the right direction and that often means away from their comfort zone...and yours. 

Identifying only some of the stakeholders

Your boss is obvious. But do you need to involve his boss? Why would you need to? What about colleagues? What about on the business side? For example, when we propose to change course like you probably will, chances are some important stakeholders were actually there and perhaps instrumental to setting up the previous data environment. What happens if you do not involve them and "seek their sound advice"? The sad truth is that you can do all the right things and still lose. You can build it and they will not come or they will block you. If you are a career IT person, sometimes change management is not something that comes naturally. Make sure you use a framework that forces you to look at all the aspects of what you are trying to embark on and seek guidance, internally or externally. 

In part 3, I will dive into what happens after the first 90 days in the journey of the BI/Analytics/Data Engineering Director. There will be key events coming at you and by knowing when to recognize them, you can be ready to address them like a master.