The path to data
Magan told us that his instincts and curiosity paved his way to the role he inhabits today. “A lot of my formative career was in software development, building systems,” he explained. “I did a lot of the backend, database, build, and data components. Perhaps not in the way people think of data today, but data governance, data quality, data privacy.”
He might still be doing this if his bosses didn’t recognize his strength: mapping business need to technical fundamentals. They asked him to move to the US and lead a major data project. Accepting wasn’t a simple decision.
“It was a pivotal and scary moment,” Magan explained. “I saw myself as a technology specialist. There’s an opportunity to try something new, leading a data team. What if this doesn’t work out and I derail my career because now I’ve gotten so far away from my core?” In the end Magan told us his curiosity and desire to be at the centre of things closed the deal. “In the top three reasons of why big projects fail is one is data. I like the big picture. I like to know how the building blocks come together so that I can enable the outcome,” Magan told us. “I took the risk and it paid dividends because ever since that moment on I’ve been in the data space.”
This story originally appeared on Computerworld
