After going through all the clients projects, I have come out the other end with a few insights and tips that I wish I had know earlier.

Client projects at the data school are very interesting and is where I feel that I really solidified most of my learnings from the training and also where I felt that I boosted my confidence in my ability to produce a body of work that could answer a clients requirements, show case my skill set and step into my consulting shoes by asking questions of the data beyond the requirements and taking my client on a journey to see what's possible with their data.

During these projects I was thrust into industries I had no knowledge of and found my self equipped at the end of every week with the ability to step further into these industries with a decent level of knowledge of how the sector worked and a ton of ideas of things i could do next to help the clients make better use of their data.

Here's a few tips I would give to someone starting their clients projects now or any one with a week to complete a body of work that requires you to start from ground zero.

• At the project lunch find out who the client is and what they need. Don't be afraid to ask lots of questions and if possible try to dig through the data a little before your meeting so you can ask questions of what all the fields mean
• Write your user Journey as early as possible to give yourself direction. if you were the end user, what would you like to see and why. Cement your understanding of who they are and how you could help them.
• Ask yourself what you understand about the project deliverables and make sure to check back in with the client giving them a summary of your understanding about the deliverables so you can be corrected as early as possible if there are any misunderstandings.
• Rescope if you have to; if you feel like your time is running out its better to give a really good body of work focused on one thing than to have started and not completed 5 things
• Review your work, and show the client the process so you can asses what’s worked and what needs to change.