In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith demonstrates how the division of labor is the chief source of productivity gains using the vivid example of a pin factory assembly line: “One [person] draws out the wire, another straights it, a third cuts it, a fourth points it, a fifth grinds it.”

This division of labor by function is so ingrained in us even today that we are quick to organize our teams accordingly. Data science is no exception. An end-to-end algorithmic business capability requires many functions, and so companies usually create teams of specialists: research scientist, data engineers, machine learning engineers, causal inference scientists, and so on. Specialists’ work is coordinated by a product manager, with hand-offs between the functions in a manner resembling the pin factory: “one person sources the data, another models it, a third implements it, a fourth measures it” and on and on.

Source: hbr.org
Author: Eric Colson