Your data team takes 2 weeks to answer a business question. That decision’s already been made.
There’s one metric I ask every data team about in week one of an engagement: analytics lead time. How long between someone asking a question and getting an answer they can act on? Some call it time to insight. Same thing.
Most teams don’t track this. They track pipeline uptime, dashboard load times, incident count. Operational metrics. But the metric that actually shows whether your data team influences decisions? Nobody’s measuring it.
Here’s what I’ve seen across clients: teams with a lead time under 3 days have influence. People come back with more questions. Data shapes decisions. Teams where time to insight stretches past 2 weeks? The business makes gut calls and backfills with data later. Your team becomes a reporting function, not a strategic one.
The fix isn’t complicated, but it requires honesty. Track every request. Measure the gap. Then look at what’s eating the time - usually it’s prioritization chaos, not technical complexity.
Self-service helps. Clear ownership helps more. But you can’t fix what you don’t measure.
I was guilty of ignoring this metric for years. Focused on technical excellence while the business was making decisions without us.
What’s your analytics lead time from question to answer?