+300 to the brand’s HR karma and a bunch of beautiful dashboards
Hey Habr! Just last week we completed our small intensive sprint. He proved that in 10 days it is quite possible to get acquainted with the Visiology platform to such an extent that you can start making your own dashboards, deal with the features of loading data and building a model, and other nuances of working with BI. Interestingly, both experienced BI specialists and novice specialists took part in our sprint. Under the cut are several opinions of active participants, as well as examples of dashboards created during the training.
So, why did we need a sprint intensive? The fact is that today there are many specialists who are psychologically ready to work with the platform, but do not have the skills of real work. And as organizations step by step move from Western BI tools and start developing BI based on Russian products, the demand for expertise is getting higher.
Evgeny Stuchalkin agreed to lead our sprint, a well-known specialist in BI, Self-Service, and especially for extensive expertise in working with Qlik in the past, as well as its transfer to Russian rails in the present and future.
“On Visiology today you can find quite a lot of useful and very informative materials. But for a full-fledged acquaintance with the platform, two components are most often missing – convenient access to an already deployed test environment, as well as coaching and support from experienced instructors. At this sprint, we just implemented these features, and also helped novice users to decide on the primary tasks. As a result, we managed to fit the full cycle of working with BI into a small program – from preparing data to creating a ready-made dashboard”,
— Evgeny Stuchalkinarchitect of BI2BUSINESS self-service solutions.
There were more registrations for the sprint than we expected. More than 300 people reached the real solution of problems, and all of them successfully completed the course. This is a very good result for such an event, because in fact each of our marathon “runners” can now say: “Yes, I can do it in Visiology”
“I have already taken several Visiology courses and had some understanding of the platform – in my opinion the solution is quite interesting. But where, if not at marathons and similar events, you can get better acquainted with the domestic BI platform?
The sprint format also pleased. I really liked the sympathetic hosts who actually answered the questions. In my opinion, there was a good order for submitting information, we were given full access to the system in order to try all the functionality of interest.
Now I have definitely become at least a confident user of the platform, I hope Visiology will continue to expand the functionality, I really look forward to when such a sprint will take place completely on Visiology 3 and we will test DAX from Visiology in detail. In general, I would like a marathon to study more “advanced” functions and chips, in this marathon there was more familiarity with the system”,
— Nikolay Solovyov, ALAN-IT
Course participants received new tasks every day and reported on them to their curators. Thanks to this, it was possible to immediately analyze the most common difficulties, as well as answer questions of interest to the audience. The course itself was built in such a way as to cover the main stages of working with the platform and provide students with the opportunity to prepare for a dashboard based on test data “from and to”.
“My favorite part of this sprint was about preparing the data. Maybe it’s because I’m not good at design. 🙂 But if we talk about taking the course in general, the best moment was when I understood and mastered the main elements of any dashboard – indicators and measurements.
I already knew about Visiology in general before starting the intensive, and the course helped me to try out the mechanics in practice. Now the basic tools are mastered. Of the advanced level tools, there is still a Java script. Further, I plan to use the acquired knowledge in practice as necessary, and questions and answers will arise already in the process, on real projects.
We all see that the product Visiology with the transition to the 3rd version will change dramatically. So, in the next similar marathon, we expect the development of new mechanics and are preparing to participate again”,
— Gevork Fidyanyan, NeoFlex.
During the sprint, participants not only completed basic tasks, but also got acquainted with additional Visiology tools. For example, Maxim Gubin talked about how AI technologies can be used – namely ViTalk GPT to generate scripts for loading data through Vixtract.
“It was an experience that I can confidently call successful. Since such a sprint was launched for the first time, many technical difficulties had to be solved, which we learned about only during the event. But due to the fact that Visiology can be quickly adapted to the current conditions, whether it be customer tasks or a sprint test environment, we were able to solve all the difficulties and release each part of the course at the right time and in full. For me personally, the challenge was working with such a BIG audience. Almost 24/7 you are in touch with people for whom the platform is like a new book from their favorite author. Everyone wants to learn something important, find something new and learn absolutely everything. Perhaps most importantly, it was not boring! We picked up an interesting case and successfully divided it into days, so that everyone would be comfortable working. Visiology 3 sprint is ahead of us, which we are already preparing for!”
— Maxim GubinHead of Visiology Expertise and Competency Development.
Interestingly, the sprint included not only seasoned BI experts – both developers and analysts – but also novice specialists. That is, it turned out to be not at all difficult to make your own dashboard according to the method of Evgeny and Maxim.
“I want to develop further in analytics, although I am new to this topic. If we take “experience” as a bottom line, then it is only from November 2022. And it would even be more correct to say that I am trying to “join in” from now on.
My introduction to BI started with Power BI. In this sense, Visiology looks like a very close system. Yes, there are shortcomings, but for me everything is quite understandable: at first, foreign products were developed by the whole world, and now the task is to develop domestic ones, but only on our own and in a short time. I’m sure Visiology has a great future.
I really wanted to learn something new about the platform. And, yes, I really learned something during the sprint 😊 I really liked the organization: for many participants, it was necessary to prepare servers, give access, materials, and provide chat support. In my case, the servers worked without interruption, access was granted immediately, the materials were understandable, and the chat support worked almost around the clock! Reference information was understood, decomposed into versions and editions.
After the sprint, I really want to get acquainted with the third version of the platform. My eyes are burning on my own to load data, assemble a model, work with DAX.”,
– Nina Nogteva, at the time of the sprint – a novice analyst.
And yet – such an event provides a huge opportunity to collect feedback. Yes, the reaction of the participants was generally positive, but we received a lot of wishes, both on the platform itself and on the format of holding such events. Eugene and Maxim will definitely take them into account when preparing for the next sprint. And if you could not take part in our “race”, do not be upset. The program, along with tasks and methods of self-examination, will be posted in our LMS system as soon as possible!
