Who This Helps
Founders and operators drowning in data issues. If you're trying to build trust in your numbers but everything feels urgent, this is for you. It’s a core method from the Data Reliability Leadership program.
Mini Case
Mei’s team was stuck. They had 14 potential data fixes on the board. By scoring each one on impact (1-5) and effort (1-5), they found a clear winner: fixing the broken customer lifetime value pipeline. It was a high-impact (5), medium-effort (3) task that took 2 days to complete and unblocked 3 other teams. The other 13 ideas? They went on the backlog.
Do This Now (5 Steps)
- List your candidates. Grab your top 3-5 potential reliability fixes or experiments. Think about things like slow dashboards, broken reports, or untrusted metrics.
- Define your Data Contracts. For each candidate, write one sentence on what ‘reliable’ means. For example: “The daily active user count updates by 9 AM with 99% accuracy.” This is your contract.
- Score the impact. How much does this contract being broken hurt the business? Use a simple 1 (low) to 5 (high) scale.
- Score the effort. How many person-days will it take to make this contract solid? Again, 1 (easy) to 5 (hard).
- Calculate and pick. Divide the impact score by the effort score. The highest result is your winner. Go make that your team’s next mission.
Avoid These Traps
- Chasing shiny objects. Don’t pick the ‘cool’ tech fix. Pick the one that solves a real stakeholder pain point.
- Ignoring the baseline. If you haven’t defined what reliability means for a metric, you can’t prioritize fixing it. That’s why the Data Contracts mission is so key.
- Analysis paralysis. You don’t need perfect data to make this decision. Good enough numbers beat waiting for perfect ones every time.
- Skipping the narrative. If you pick a winner but can’t explain why in one sentence to your team, go back to step 2.
Your Win by Friday
By Friday, you’ll have one clear, high-impact experiment in motion. You’ll stop the endless debate about what to do next. Your team will have a focused target, like defining a contract for your top revenue metric. You’ll build momentum, and trust in your numbers will start to climb. It’s like finding the one lever that actually moves the machine.