This week has the feeling of the beginning of the end. With my own project management week completed, our final client project combined with our Tableau Data Analyst certification provides a sense of a chapter nearing it's close.
Tableau Certification
With half of DS53 completing our Tableau Exam 2 weeks ago, the time came for the other half of us to take it. Having had an excellent refresher session from Serena Purslow, there was only minimal revision to be done in my own time. Thankfully the training from TIL had us more than prepared for the certification, with all of our cohort passing on the first try. However, it was not as straight forward an exam as it can appear to be on the surface.
If you are planning on sitting your Salesforce Certified Tableau Data Analyst Certification and want some helpful information, or curious as to what the exam is, make sure to read my blog about it here.
Surprise Coach
On Wednesday we had Andy Kriebel visiting the TIL offices, and we had the chance to ask him for a lesson in whatever we wanted! We asked for a Dynamic Zone Visibility lesson, and he obliged. We built a dashboard with not one, or two, but three pop up dashboards depending on what is selected in the dashboard. This proved to be a useful recap of the topic, and a unique opportunity to be coached by our coach's coach. Click here to view.
Final Client Project
With 7 client projects under our belts, this week felt similar to the last in terms of being a culmination of all our learning at the Data School.
As a team we work well together, over the process of training fine tuning our work style in a manner that comes naturally to us. We have a good understanding of each others strengths and weaknesses, picking up on when we may need help from each other or externally. This allowed for a smooth week from a team cohesion perspective, where we are able to allocate tasks and help each other in order to produce a project successfully.
This week I was back on dashboards, aiming to revitalise the end of shift cash up sheet the business produced for each venue at the end of the day. I was paired with Olivia Millar who focused on the data section of the dashboard. The focus was keeping all the vital information the cash up sheet currently has, but adding in contextual information that improves the use case. For this, I added in comparisons to the same day last week, which helps to compare shorter windows of time. Additionally, with a lot of Olivia's help, we were able to create a same weekday last year calculation for the KPI's and charts, which was a more a relevant calculation than the same date last year, as the business relies heavily on Thursday and Saturday night business. Another fun chart to implement was a chart analysing budget surplus/deficit over the period of a week. This chart is more visually interesting than a bar chart, and better visualises the extent of surplus/deficit over time and how large the value is, the wider the time horizon (Below is an example of the chart).
The presentation was a success, with all members of the team producing work that we are proud of, as well as most importantly, a happy client.
Next week...
Refresher week begins, and will provide a good opportunity to recap areas I feel need more attention. I am hoping to submit a dashboard for the IronViz 2026 application, and a mystery task set by Coach Lorna for Friday.