LATEST UPDATES
latest

4 Steps to becoming a Tableau Ninja

How to become a Tableau Ninja

For the seventh consecutive year, Tableau has been recognized as a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms. Gartner consider a broad spectrum of eligibility criteria, from market presence to user enablement, sales experience, and roadmap. Be it a Data Scientist, Data Analyst, Data Visualizer, showing Tableau as one of the skills on your resume does make a difference! But newcomers often grapple with the dilemma about where to start.

1. Take a formal course in Tableau
The Tableau community has a huge knowledge-base, and features a free Tableau training on their website. Whether you are doing deep data prep and analysis, working on Tableau Server or Tableau Online, looking to make data-driven decisions based on your organization's analytics, or trying to manage a Tableau deployment, either on-premises or in the cloud, they have a video for you. You can start by visiting the Tableau Training page.

2. Participate in Makeover Mondays
They release a new data set every Monday, and you can join them to work with a given data set and create better, more effective visualizations and help make information more accessible. This is a very good learning point, more so because you get comprehensive feedback from Andy & Eva (the creators of Makeover Monday) by adding the hashtag #MMVizReview in your tweet and join their live webinar every Wednesday, 4pm BST/GMT. Head over to their website, and participate regularly to develop your Tableau skills.

3. Start reading a Tableau book
I always found learning a new programming/analytics software is easier if you have a book handy. Here is a list of books that you might find useful for learning Tableau:

  • Learning Tableau 2019 by Joshua Milligan.
  • Tableau Your Data!: Fast and Easy Visual Analysis with Tableau Software by Daniel G. Murray
  • Communicating Data with Tableau by Ben Jones
  • Tableau Dashboard Coookbook by Jennifer Jane Stirrup

    Also, remember, that learning Tableau does not guarantee that you would create great visualizations. It only guarantees that you know how to create a visualization inside the Tableau environment. However, to create great visualizations, you must understand the design concept. Here are some great Data Visualization books that I would recommended:

  • Now You See It by Stephen Few
  • Visualizing Data by William S. Cleveland
  • Turning Numbers into Knowledge: Mastering the Art of Problem Solving by Jonathan G. Koomey
  • Data Fluency: Empowering Your Organization with Effective Data Communication by Zach Gemignani
  • Data Points: Visualization That Means Something by Nathan Yau
  • The Functional Art: An Introduction to Information Graphics and Visualization by Alberto Cairo
  • Story Telling with Data by Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic
  • #Makeover Monday by Eva Murray and Andy Kriebel

    4. Follow blogs of Tableau Wiz
    The Tableau community is very friendly, and helpful. I personally would suggest following these blog since they are highly informative, and even if you are having some trouble following up, you can always get in touch with the authors, and I am sure they would help you out:

  • Ken Flerlage
  • Chris Gerrard
  • Charlie Hutcheson

    Finally, there is the humongous Tableau Community. You can always reachout to them for any queries. And don't forget to checkout the beautiful Interactive Tableau Resumes that you can tweak yourself!
    « PREV
    NEXT »