Da Facto: The Analytic Value Chain - Defining the Problem

Thursday, September 6, 2007

The Analytic Value Chain - Defining the Problem

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The Analytic Value Chain introduced

One mistake analysts make when starting analytic work is to just jump right in with the data. I have had staff waste weeks of time learning that they (and me) misunderstood the problem being asked by our business partners. I am not proud of this, but it is a lesson learned. What have we done to mitigate the problem? We try to have kick off meetings for every large scale analysis so that the person doing the analysis (and their manager) can get a good bead on the problem the business is trying to solve. In these conversations, we spend a lot of time trying to understand why our internal clients think something is a problem, try to get a sense of root causes (that drive our data needs and analytic choices), and get agreement as to the deliverable (as well as timing.) We also try to set some ground rules around changing the problem in mid-stream. Once we kick off an analysis, any change in the request resets the timeline that we provided for the analysis. Another best practice here is for the manager to check in with the analyst a week or so after the analysts starts the work.

So, the first way that an analytic staff can add value is to help their internal clients define the problem.

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