Change Managment - Creating a data driven boss

Avinash has a nice post on helping your boss become more data driven. I generally like lists of best practices and he is a gold mine of the things. While he is focused on Web Analytics, most of what he espouses is relevant in the business analytics world. Check it out.

The Analytic Value Chain - QA the data

Related posts
The Analytic Value Chain introduced
Defining the problem
Determine Data Requirements
Locate Relevant Data
Extract, Transform, and Load the data

Sorry for the long delay between posts. I have been focused on my job search and just got my head above water.

I won't do a big song and dance on this part of the value chain, I already did a post on QA'ing your data, here.

A fast story on how the prevalence of data quality problems . I was speaking with someone whom is an expert in the direct marketing industry about a brief sojourn in consulting. She went into consulting because she likes doing novel things and she thought that consulting was going to provide that variety. She was lamenting that all of the engagements she worked on were similar, with "correcting data hygiene" as how she spent most of her time. The problem is endemic.

No matter where you get your data, a third party or an internal data mart, you have to check the quality of the data. And regularly. Assume data is guilty until proven innocent.