The 30-60-90 Analytics Onboarding Map
New analytics hires either drown in context or start building random dashboards. A structured ramp cuts noise and builds trust faster.
Guiding Principles
- Bias toward pairing with domain owners over reading stale docs.
- Deliver one real decision-enabling artifact by Day 30.
- Always surface assumptions in early analyses.
- Write a weekly narrative: what you learned, blockers, next bets.
Day 0–30: Orientation & Mapping
Goals: Understand value chain, confirm data sources, ship 1 lightweight win.
Focus: Data inventory, KPI glossary, access requests, primary user flows.
Deliverable: Single-page KPI landscape + one quick diagnostic (e.g., funnel attrition).
Focus: Data inventory, KPI glossary, access requests, primary user flows.
Deliverable: Single-page KPI landscape + one quick diagnostic (e.g., funnel attrition).
- Shadow support / product reviews.
- Interview a PM: “Which metric is misunderstood?”
- List fragile / manual reporting processes.
- Identify first automation candidate.
Day 31–60: Acceleration
Goals: Replace manual report, introduce governance, validate a model or forecast.
Focus: Pipeline reliability, metric standardization, stakeholder cadence.
Deliverable: Automated refresh + adoption tracking dashboard.
Focus: Pipeline reliability, metric standardization, stakeholder cadence.
Deliverable: Automated refresh + adoption tracking dashboard.
- Close access gaps preventing reproducibility.
- Implement naming standards for event or table sets.
- Add usage tracking to new dashboard.
- Start backlog of “data quality debt.”
Day 61–90: Strategic Leverage
Goals: Drive a retention or conversion experiment; mentor incoming analyst/dev.
Focus: Experiment design, model evaluation in production context, proactive insights.
Focus: Experiment design, model evaluation in production context, proactive insights.
- Partner with product on an A/B test instrumentation map.
- Produce retention cohort deep‑dive.
- Ship a forward-looking executive summary (not just monthly recap).
- Document clear next quarter bets.
“Velocity early, leverage later.”
Anti-Patterns to Avoid
- Spending week 1 perfecting local dev environment.
- Building a giant metrics catalog nobody reads.
- Taking ticket queue work without questioning impact.
- Skipping stakeholder playback of early findings.
Takeaways
- Context + small wins trump architecture purity at first.
- Automate one fragile report by Day 60.
- Shift from reactive to proactive insights by Day 90.
- Leave a narrative trail—future you (and leadership) will thank you.
Copy, remix, adapt. A structured start compounds.