Presentation and Documentation
Make the work survive contact with an audience
Presentations and docs are the delivery layer of an analyst's work. A tight 10-minute review and a README that stands alone make your analysis reproducible, reviewable, and promotable.
What you will learn
- Structure a 10-minute analytics review
- Write a README that reproduces the work from scratch
- Design the handoff so next week's analyst inherits the context
What is this?
Presentation and documentation cover both the live review and the durable artifact. A great review is 10 tight minutes: context, one insight, evidence, recommendation, next steps. Great documentation — a README with data dictionary, method, reproduction steps, and known limitations — lets the work be trusted and continued without you.
Why do you need it?
- A review wins the decision; the docs protect the decision afterward.
- Reproducible work is checkable work — reviewers trust what they can rerun.
- Handoff quality determines whether your insight becomes a product or a footnote.
Mental model
A pilot's cockpit checklist
The presentation + docs pair
The live checklist gets the flight done; the manuals keep every future flight possible. Reviews decide, docs endure.
How it works
- Build the deck around one decision: context, insight, evidence, action.
- Rehearse to a timer and cut anything that does not serve the takeaway.
- Write the README from a blank folder: can a stranger rerun it?
- Archive the method, data dictionary, and limitations beside the code.
Live review wins the decision; docs keep it trustworthy after.
In production
- A monthly growth review ends with one ask: which experiment to fund.
- A portfolio README includes the environment and data seed script.
- An analyst offboard passes a documented repo, not a chat thread.
Best practices
- Rehearse out loud and keep the review under its timebox.
- Put reproduction steps and the data dictionary in the README.
- List known limitations explicitly — they build more trust than polish.
Common mistakes
- A 40-slide deck whose insight is on slide 28.
- A README that cannot be followed from an empty checkout.
- Docs that describe what was done but never why.
Debugging tips
- If rehearsal runs long every time, cut a section, then cut parts of another.
- If a reviewer cannot rerun the work, add a `make setup` section or pinned env file.
Interview checkpoint
Quick quiz
A strong analytics review centers on
A README that lets a stranger rerun the work requires