Every engagement starts with a Diagnostic

I'm a fractional Senior Data Analyst. Fractional means I work with a company for a defined period of time rather than as a full-time hire.

I help small companies, and small autonomous units inside larger ones, make sense of their data. The data they have, the questions they're carrying around, and the gap between the two.

I've spent years in product and data management, close enough to the users to tell the difference between what someone asks for and what they actually need to do, and close enough to development to work out with them a solution worth what it costs to build.

My not-so-secret secret: I speak client user, client manager, programmer, and QA. Speaking all four is why I can recognize early where a data project begins to go wrong, while it is still cheap to change course.

Most of the work is remote. I do like to start in person where possible. An early meeting, and time watching how people actually use what they have, tells me things a call doesn't. I have no interest in displacing your team. Good teams make it happen with me, not around me.

What the Diagnostic is

Before I propose anything, I like to look around.

The Diagnostic is a defined, time-limited engagement. I read the information you have, talk with the people who use it and the people who built it, and write back what I see: what's working, what isn't, and what the highest-leverage next thing is.

What's in it:

Contact hours with you and your team. Interviews, working sessions, walkthroughs of the data, the dashboards, the notebooks, whatever lives in production.

Thinking hours. Reading the work properly, running small checks against it, writing the read-back. The part that isn't in the room.

A written read-back. What I found, what I'd do next, and what I think you should stop doing. Short, and in plain language.

Typical shape: one to two calendar weeks, roughly 10 to 20 hours of my time, divided between contact and thinking. It's a fixed fee, and I'll tell you the number before you commit to anything and only then we can agree to start.

The Diagnostic produces the scope for whatever follows: something concrete enough to price and agree on, instead of a guess.

What happens after the Diagnostic

One of these three, and I'll tell you which one I recommend:

You don't need me. Sometimes what you have is fine. Sometimes the real need is for an engineer, or a hire, rather than a fractional analyst. If that's what I find, I'll say so, you keep the written read-back, and we're done. That's the most honest version of this work, and it happens.

A defined piece of work makes sense. Fixed deliverable, fixed scope, fixed price, agreed after the Diagnostic, because that's the first point at which I can quote it honestly. Building the analytics layer on a data warehouse you already have. Rebuilding one dashboard that's currently misleading. Designing the data model you'll need for the next two years.

A longer relationship makes sense. Either a roadmap, meaning a sequenced plan where the first piece is scoped, priced and done, with later steps priced as we reach them. Or a monthly retainer: a set amount of time each month spent on whatever you've prioritized.

Why I work this way

Because I've seen too many engagements that started with a fixed quote and a confident proposal, then met the actual data, and the confident proposal stopped being useful.

The Diagnostic is small enough to be honest and large enough to be worth having on its own, even if we never work together again.

How I work

I'm an analyst. The questions come from your business, not from a research agenda.

I lead the work, not the people: a defined problem, taken through to a result.

If any of this sounds familiar

Write to me at dorithkleinstein@gmail.com. Tell me what the situation is, as you see it. A few lines are plenty. If I think I can help I'll tell you what a Diagnostic would look like for you, and what it costs, before you commit to anything.

If not, I will tell you that too.