About

Michaelople

Michaelople builds data products to provide insights into your operation. We focus on function over flash — understanding the problem you’re trying to solve and creating a simple product that addresses precisely that. We build using free and open source software (FOSS) like R, Shiny, Python, Quarto, etc. to keep your costs down. Enterprise data product software like PowerBI and Tableau are bulky and expensive. FOSS is light, nimble, cheap, and can be built to be just as secure as you need.

Every project is built with reproducibility and transparency in mind. Our processes and products are open (to you). We are just as happy to build you a product and turn over the keys as we are to continue maintaining the product for you. We’d rather teach you to fish than sell you one whenever you’re hungry.

Approach

Articulate the problem

Initial discussion will determine what insight or problem the client seeks to solve with data. Do you have a suspicion that you’d like to confirm? Do you have a bunch of data and not know what it is telling you? Sitting down and determining what the end product will be able to tell you keeps the project in-scope and goal-directed.

Identify the data source

Where are these data? Are they on a database and you do not know how to get to them? Are they living across your many software services and you do not know how to connect them? Are they publicly available? Do you need to create the data through a survey? How much cleaning is required? Developing a data strategy early precludes problems down the line.

Draft. Review. Revise. Iterate.

You are the subject matter expert. We will develop a draft that is full of errors and holes. The object of holding regular meetings, ideally once-a-week initially, is to continually break the product in order to have it come out the next week better. This pace is not necessary forever; as the product is further developed, the amount of effort that goes into it asymptotes.

Maintain

The maintenance schedule is entirely up to you. Do you just need a couple of graphs? Do you need something you can regularly check? Do you need dashboards that live on your own page? Let’s talk about it.