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Ever wonder why your company's data and analytical tools aren’t delivering the value they…
Articles by Tristan
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Troubleshooting Fabric Link
Troubleshooting Fabric Link
Fabric link is a great way of getting data out of D365 F&O and into Microsoft Fabric. Minimal setup, create a…
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How will energy prices affect you? Reality versus the headlines.
How will energy prices affect you? Reality versus the headlines.
Your data headlines are incredibly important. Current Headline: Ofgem Hikes UK Energy Price Cap to £3,549 from October.
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Covid Under Reporting
Covid Under Reporting
As with all things data related Covid-19 reporting suffers from a lack of availability, human conservatism and lack of…
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Activity
7K followers
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Tristan Mobbs posted thisDo you ever wonder why we work in the way we do? I bet you have some work habits that someone else would think are odd. You probably do something really inefficient too. Some of these things might add value in other ways. Others probably just get in the way. But why do we do these things? Here are 5 potential reasons. 1) False productivity Sometimes feeling busy makes us think we are making progress, but we might just be inefficient at completing our tasks. 2) Solving the wrong problems It might be because those problems are easier to solve. Or we find them more interesting. Yet they might not be the ones adding business value. 3) Routine We might stick to that weekly meeting because we feel like we should talk about something that frequently. Or we might just expand the task to fill the time. 4) Visibility We might react to the things that are visible. Or that make us appear to be doing a good job. Yet that less visible thing could be the one that makes a huge difference. 5) Firefighting You get to be the hero. Or you could stop being an arsonist. 6) Inserting ourselves into a process where we are not needed Could we have automated that step? Could we have trusted someone else to make that decision? Are we doing it just to make ourselves feel valued? Doing less but better. Stopping doing meaningless tasks. Being able to do more with less. I feel that these three outcomes are worth striving for. Sometimes we need to step off the treadmill to evaluate the why.
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Tristan Mobbs posted thisThe easy option often isn't the best option for us in the long term. From simple things in life: taking the lift vs the stairs or driving that 5 minute walk to the shops. They help us save time, but we lose out on the other benefits. Increased fitness. 5 minutes of relaxing time walking. The same is true in data. We can copy and paste code and get something working. Awesome for us to get something done. Yet if anything goes wrong, or we need to change in future we end up stuck. Learning principals and how to problem solve is a more valuable skill than being able to copy something someone else has done. There is a place for both of course. But it's often worth knowing when to take the longer route for the additional benefits.
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Tristan Mobbs posted thisOften in the world of analytics, there is a model to run or a process to follow. Learning the process can be quick But understanding the process takes much longer Some key areas can help build that understanding: Speaking to senior people in the organisation to understand how the process helps the business achieves its goals Delving into the detail, can you follow a line of data through the process. Can you understand the inputs and the outputs? Where do they come from? Where do they go? Some parts of the process will click and others will take much longer to grasp. Understanding the bigger picture helps ensure you don't get bogged down in analysis with limited business impact. What do you think you could do to increase your knowledge of a process?
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Tristan Mobbs posted thisData teams can rarely affect a business on their own They need to work with stakeholders to figure out: How the business makes money What areas the business can improve How to scale things that the business does well Sitting in isolation and taking orders doesn't do anyone any favours. Spotting things the business can improve and not sharing them doesn't change a business. Building new data products and then surprising your colleagues with them isn't going to drive adoption. If you work in data, get out there and talk to your colleagues. It will be amazing what you find out and solve together.
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Tristan Mobbs posted thisData folk will talk about SQL and the order of operations. But is the order of your process optimised? If not, you could be wasting a lot of time and effort. In energy forecasting you have to work with 50 half hours of energy. Multiply that by millions of customers and you have a lot of data. You can scale that down by working daily. So if you want to apply high-level adjustments to your forecast, should you do it daily or half-hourly? No brainer that it is daily right? Pointing that out saved hours of processing time. Check your order of operations, you might find some quick wins.
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Tristan Mobbs posted thisTechnical skills will only get you so far. It doesn't matter how good your technical skills are if: You solve the wrong problems No one can use your output because they don't understand it You spend all your time identifying something the business experts already know without the need for additional data Your skills are way above everyone else's so no one can support what you built when you leave. Do you need to learn those additional functions or techniques? Or could you spend your time developing non-technical skills that will multiply the impact of your technical ability?
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Tristan Mobbs posted thisLots of advice on LinkedIn is to jump into action. You will likely learn quicker. You will likely retain information better. And this is true, we are largely better at doing than thinking. Yet you still need to control the direction you are going. It is possible to learning numerous languages in data and technology. So do you take action and try to learn them all and all of their functions. Or you use AI tools to write them all for you. But without some foundational knowledge. That isn't going to work out too well. So define the direction. What problems do you have to solve? What technology makes you employable? Start learning the things that add value. Nail the fundamentals, there is little point learning every possible function when you will never use them. The things you use regularly will stick. Have a bias to action but remember to think about your direction first.
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Tristan Mobbs posted thisSo what does that mean? As a young analyst, there was a stakeholder who I found incredibly annoying. I couldn't understand why they didn't get my amazing analysis I thought it was their job to understand it too. It took me about a year to realise that wasn't their job. I was employed to understand all the technical stuff. They just needed to know the impact and to ensure the outcomes were delivering the right things for the business. I also realised that I didn't know as much as I thought. (what a surprise) I needed to understand those technical concepts more deeply in order to explain them in simple terms. Once I could do that my impact was far higher. Have you had a stakeholder who annoyed you but you later realised was completely right?
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Tristan Mobbs shared thisLast night I attended the May meetup of Birmingham Power BI Meetup #PBIBRUM, two great talks, pizza, and some insightful conversations. Rui Romano kicked off with a talk demonstrating some of the capabilities of agentic development within Power BI. The ability to assign tasks to agents in GitHub, really making them part of your team, stood out to me as a big step forward. This also built on my talk from last month on how to get started with agentic development. If you aren't trying it yet, give it a go. As Rui said, you don't learn this from a book; you learn by diving in and learning it yourself. Jason Conway then discussed one mistake he made in Power BI development. Despite it working in development, in production it blew out capacity. A great talk showcasing a practical example and how to solve it. Optimising the wrong thing proved to be the challenge here. Jason shared how he was then able to resolve the problem by focusing on the data modeling and reducing the size of the model. Achieved by reducing the precision of data and defragmenting the tables and dictionaries. Really helpful tips. Another great event, many thanks to the organisers. Photo courtesy of Matthew Collier
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Salma Sultana I love this example, with that deeper knowledge improving your abilities to do things at a shallower level.If you know how something works, it makes your decisions far more effective.
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Olamilekan Alaga spot on, picking the right tool for the problem is so effective. Most often it's the simpler tool.
Tristan Mobbs replied to a comment
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Graeme McDermott fair play to him, in my case all the sports are definitely for me!
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Tristan Mobbs liked thisTristan Mobbs liked thisThis morning I swapped my desk for a spade. I ventured into the Sheffield office, dropped off my bag, grabbed a bowl of cereal and jumped on a bus heading up the hill. Arriving early, I found myself on a bench with a book, surrounded by foxgloves and forget-me-nots. Then the team arrived, and we got to work: lifting railway sleepers, shovelling woodchip, clearing paths, pulling weeds in the sunshine. Today I used one of my volunteering days at The Promised Land, a Sheffield community smallholding that uses nature, practical activity and community to help people reconnect, rebuild confidence and find a sense of belonging. There's something deeply satisfying about spending a day on practical work that visibly matters. By the end of the day, we could see the difference we'd made. After lunch, more paths cleared, more weeds pulled, then back down the hill to the office. Great day. Great company. Interesting conversations. Time to connect with the earth. Time to reflect.
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Tristan Mobbs reacted on thisTristan Mobbs reacted on thisThis week on how not to do data: The return of the BBC Sport data team. 257 goals is a lot. It can feel a difficult number to fully comprehend. Not sure that plotting them on an 18-wide grid with no comparisons, benchmarks or differentiation really helps with that though? More useful suggestions: 👉 Colours to differentiate which season they were scored in 👉 Bar chart comparing him to other top scorers for individual clubs It's far less egregious than some of BBC Sport's previous work featured on here but still fairly a fairly useless representation of data.
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Tristan Mobbs liked thisTristan Mobbs liked thisWhat a series of brilliant decisions I chose to make. To pitch a keynote on how we can make better decisions to my great friend and long-term collaborator Lucy P., curator and doyenne of the Bath Digital Festival. To have her suggest that the Festival’s theme (“What if …?”) was the perfect framing for a session titled “What if we could make better decisions?”. To arrive the night before my keynote, in time for a breakfast of brilliant networking with Festival delegates and a 90-minute showcase, where I got to introduce our new CLEAR Standard for Decision Quality to dozens of eager entrepreneurs and founders. And to stay for the whole of day three of the festival, full of brilliant brain food, AND a great, sun-drenched reception to top off the event. Oh! what a trip. “Thank you, Bath: we shall definite-ly return!” If you’d like to assess the quality of your next pressing decision – at work or in your personal life – follow the link in the first comment below and follow the simple instructions. Decision quality matters. And now there’s a tool that allows you to test that quality before you even make your decision.
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Tristan Mobbs liked thisTristan Mobbs liked thisYesterday was my first in-person workshop after starting DA Ecosystems Advisory We spent half the day working through where AI fit into their operations, how to redesign business processes, and most importantly how to use Claude Cowork with the right foundation (because it is such a hard topic to master on top of a full time job) As you might guess, my client is a greenhouse operator (Haven Greens) with one of the most advanced setups in Canada. Even with all this cutting-edge technology (much of it AI-enabled), there remains significant opportunity to leverage data and AI to improve yields, reduce waste, and optimize cultivation processes. Not to mention help with all the other business processes that exist in any company. Not going to share a ton of lessons about this, just to say it is nice to go on-site, get to the root of the opportunity/ issues (get it, “root”), and provide tangible advice/ tips that we could work through in person with their whole team Plus, I got to eat the freshest, crispiest lettuce I’ve ever had. Seriously, if you live in Canada, check out Haven Greens in the grocery store. There isn’t a lettuce that compares
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Tristan Mobbs reacted on thisTristan Mobbs reacted on thisOn Bank Holiday Monday, Greyskull Analytics was the official match day sponsor for Fulwood and Broughton CC's 1st XI. 🏏 Cricket has been part of my life for as long as I can remember - playing in adult sides from the age of 13, and still at it now. Grassroots clubs run on volunteers, raffles, and the occasional bit of support from people who care about keeping them going. So it felt right to put some money where my mouth is and back my current club. The lads lost this one - a Northern Pyramid Cup tie against Chorley - but they're unbeaten in the league so far this season. 💪 Up the Fulwood Aces! 💚💛 #data #analytics #cricket #grassrootscricket #sponsorship #localbusiness
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Tristan Mobbs liked thisTristan Mobbs liked thisThe 40 foot gap has been bridged. I posted last week about Openreach and our total inability to get them to restore our broadband after a telegraph pole was knocked over. And it worked - after a fortnight with no response, one of Openreach's Directors replied, and it was all fixed within 24 hours. A LinkedIn post did what 11 days of escalations couldn't. Yesterday - I got a text from Vodafone. "Great news! We have fixed the issue with your Vodafone Home Broadband service" - this from the team that did nothing. It was fixed because we bypassed them. What interests me here is that Vodafone consistently held me at arm's length whilst promising me "automatic compensation". Their teams were doing exactly what they are clearly designed to do - log the problem, promise compensation, get me off the phone. The problem is, they're managing the contract rather than the customer. I don't want compensation - I want broadband. The fact that this is technically how the contract works is irrelevant for me. Building a team to manage the contract alienates the customer. And this isn't just utilities. There are plenty of Customer Success teams who can't influence the process or product because they lack the clout, even though they're ideally placed to know what the customer wants. Dealing with that needs a person who can spot that the business is actually delivering something entirely different from what the customer is trying to buy - and who has the power to act. (On that note, credit to the Openreach exec complaints team who did eventually get this fixed. It's just deeply frustrating that you have to short circuit the entire process and your actual ISP to get to them) It needs a translator Vocative
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Tristan Mobbs liked thisTristan Mobbs liked thisIf you've been following PBIR CLI, developed by me & Kurt Buhler, you will be happy to hear that the new v0.9.20 release with bunch of bug-fixes is out. PBIR CLI focuses on visual layer and allows to create Power BI reports/visuals agentically. For semantic models agentic development refer to my other tool: semanticops.dev. Download PBIR CLI here: https://lnkd.in/d4g_n8pR The main changes are: • Code signing - binaries now come code signed both on Windows and macOS. • Page conformance - pbir pages conform enforces visual formatting properties (title, background, border) against theme defaults across a page or report • Field where-used - pbir fields where-used finds every visual and filter that references a given field • Microsoft schemas were refreshed to May 2026 • Lots and lots of bug fixes. Thank you to everyone who has been reporting issues! ___ #PowerBI #MicrosoftFabric #AgenticDev #PBIR
Experience & Education
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Kite Packaging
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Licenses & Certifications
Volunteer Experience
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Coach
Oakfield Cricket Club
- Present 12 years 6 months
Education
Coaching Senior and Junior members of Oakfield Cricket Club, leading the coaching sessions for Under 13s and Under 15 sides. Supporting the coaching of Under 11s and All Stars Cricket.
Honors & Awards
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DataIQ 2025 Future Leader
DataIQ
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Business Efficiency Award
Connect Plus Services
Developed a 5 Minute Friday video series introducing data concepts to all employees, leading to
being presented the Business Efficiency Award and nominated for the Managing Directors Award for 2021
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