Since you’re a software developer I suggest you find some parallels on how do you approach programming problems to how you would approach a data problem. For example, developing a new feature. What are the requirements, is the technology available to implement this, what is required to pass QA testing, what is the expected result? Approach to a data problem. What is the business question, is there data available to find the answer , what’s expected after you analyze the problem, what’s the deliverable.

I’m sure this won’t answer all your questions as each person’s use case is different. I suggest you do more research to answer your specific questions. This can be reading articles on Medium which I found are very helpful, finding books that go into more details, searching Youtube for channels that talk about data analysis ( Alex the Analyst is a good one ), or enrolling in online data analysis courses that cover these topics. Best wishes on your data journey.