The roadmap keeps slipping and nobody can say why.
Put last week into six numbers. You'll see how much of it was planned and which kind of interruption took the rest.
For data engineers, analysts and data leads
The plan was fine. The week had other ideas.
Meetings, incidents, support questions and urgent asks rarely show up on a roadmap. They still take the hours.
Start by measuring one week. It takes a minute and it gives you something concrete to bring to the next planning conversation.
From one room
25 data people, one week each. Most of it wasn't planned.
43%
of the average week went to planned work.
8 hours
of meetings a week, the biggest single interruption.
10 of 25
had 60% or more of their week unplanned.
Self-reported. One week. Anonymous. Data Berlin meetup, October 2026. A small room, not a survey.
Start with the week you had
Which one sounds like your team?
The team is always busy but it's hard to show what shipped.
Busy and productive aren't the same reading. Here's why the gap opens and what the team can point to instead.
You're measured on things that don't reflect the work.
Tickets closed and dashboards built are easy to count. They rarely tell leadership whether the team is creating value.
You need a number leadership will take seriously.
Turn the hours lost to cleanup and workarounds into headcount and a yearly figure your finance team already understands.
Run it with the whole team
One shared round. One honest conversation.
Everyone answers anonymously, the team sees the pooled result together, and you talk about what's behind the number. No individual answer is ever shown.
Tell me about your team