> I never really understood tableu, it just makes fancy graphs from your data doesn't it? What's new about it?
It's really easy for business users to point it at a database and get started on their own, exploring the data. It feels like it has a much lower barrier to entry than many other reporting tools.
And once you win the hearts of executives, that's kind of the end of that discussion. It's a really sticky product.
From personal experience, Tableu has saved my team countless hours adding reporting features to our products just because some middle manager on another team got a hair in their butt, so I can see the value.
I once accidentally spawned a five-person department at a Fortune 50 company because I threw together a Django app that integrated with Active Directory and dynamically displayed a few reports that were relevant to the logged-in user's role in the organization.
I was in Corporate Strategy, and one of the C-level execs saw it. They realized that I could add new reports in a few days by myself instead of going through IT, and within a year they'd hired a new manager to run my little group and three others developers - who weren't technically developers, because we weren't part of IT.
For another ~3 years, the company's primary reporting tool for front-line operations employees lived on a repurposed desktop being used as a server that was plugged in under my desk. We did get a nice, beefy SQL Server and a decent UPS, so it wasn't a complete shoestring project.
I left shortly after IT discovered they'd been cut out of the loop on a critical business process and demanded that the whole system be rewritten in C#.
"I left shortly after IT discovered they'd been cut out of the loop on a critical business process and demanded that the whole system be rewritten in C#."
been there, done that. you have to get them on the phone early and do the whole "oh you're so great" song and dance to prevent ego bruising.
when i scope projects for clients if I have to engage with their IT department I add 6-8 weeks of implementation minimum. Anything from getting a CSR signed to SSO integration is always an excruciating experience. Going over the SOW and hitting on that item always results in a slow, exhausted, but accepting sigh from the client.
I think you might be surprised at how many people do know what a join is, they may call it another name, but it's not a hard concept to understand. It's a very common thing I've seen non-technical people do and use.
Yeah, one of my old coworkers was ecstatic when he learned about joins. He'd been downloading two tables and then using vlookup to join them in Excel. Using actual joins sped up his workflow a lot.
Thats why their non-technical user abstraction is a worthwhile investment for businesses who want their devs to be doing real work instead of pandering to the latest whims of a product director / marketing exec
At my last job I had a nontechnical boss, and I would have been ecstatic if he had a) enough of a clue to try screwing around with SQL, and b) the wisdom and humility to ask for help.
Yeah, I occasionally have to visit folks and walk them through extremely basic things like sorting data in Excel and creating pivot tables (very much not my job, I'm general purpose BI development mixed with statistical analysis & ML) but I never begrudge those meetings because it means the user is trying to become empowered to work more independently. No matter the specific skill level, that's something I can get behind.
It's really easy for business users to point it at a database and get started on their own, exploring the data. It feels like it has a much lower barrier to entry than many other reporting tools.
And once you win the hearts of executives, that's kind of the end of that discussion. It's a really sticky product.