Ep 14 | Building Data Science teams for Business Success with James Waterhouse, Head of BI and Data at Sky Betting & Gaming

In Episode 14 of Data Leaders of the North; The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom is joined by James Waterhouse, Head of BI and Data at Sky Betting & Gaming where they discuss some of the key learns that James has experienced in; Building Data Science teams for Business Success

James provides some great insight and tangible advice from his journey which has seen him build the Data Science capability at Sky Bet, while being part of the growth from a small BI team of 4 people, to a fully fledged Data & Analytics capability of 100+ people. This includes:

• How having domain knowledge within a DS team is imperative
• That you have to make the business aware of the “art of the possible” and how he went about doing that
• Why you have to be proactive in offering support to business/stakeholder problems
• The importance of having the right skills-mix and not looking for the Data Science “unicorn”
• The benefit of giving the DS autonomy to go and seek business problems and opportunities
• Why it’s important to “follow-up” to gain visibility on the value of the work that has been done
• How understanding the business strategy is essential for success and communication is key
• Why the “handoffs” and “passing of the baton” between teams is often the major challenge – the transition is equally as important as the work      itself!
• The difficulty of quantifying making better business decisions
• Advice for organisations at the start of its Data Science journey