Your colleagues regularly come to you for help with their SQL queries, leaving you less time than you’d like for your own projects. And, your colleagues have already done the basic online tutorials.
How can you help them upskill their SQL knowledge so you can spend less time on support and more time on project work?
I’ve found that at the intermediate level of SQL, working through company-specific examples is a great way to improve. The business value acts as natural motivation, which is incredibly helpful when trudging through the finer details of SQL.
Still, you don’t want to spend loads of time preparing examples. Why not borrow a practice from writers and host a SQL workshop?
Your colleagues bring the motivating examples (kind of like a potluck dinner), meaning you spend a minimal amount of time. And the group format encourages them to mutually support each other.
At my previous company, these SQL workshops became a core part of ongoing training for analysts.
How to run a SQL workshop
- Schedule a 90 minute meeting with three colleagues (participants) who are comfortable with basic SQL and want to get better.
- Ask each participant to bring an already completed SQL query they would like feedback on
- During the workshop, facilitate a discussion about each of the three queries through a variety of perspectives (e.g. performance, readability, maintenance, etc).
- It’s important to let the participants do most of the talking.
- At the end of discussing each query, ask the participant who brought the query to say what their next steps will be on improving it.
After you iterate and conduct a few of these SQL workshops (potentially looping in other colleagues), your colleagues will improve their SQL skills. You will personally field fewer questions as your colleagues will have a support system and learn from each other.
With any luck, one colleague will pick up enough SQL skills themselves and will be willing to take over the workshops from you.
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