Book Image

Building Analytics Teams

By : John K. Thompson
5 (1)
Book Image

Building Analytics Teams

5 (1)
By: John K. Thompson

Overview of this book

In Building Analytics Teams, John K. Thompson, with his 30+ years of experience and expertise, illustrates the fundamental concepts of building and managing a high-performance analytics team, including what to do, who to hire, projects to undertake, and what to avoid in the journey of building an analytically sound team. The core processes in creating an effective analytics team and the importance of the business decision-making life cycle are explored to help achieve initial and sustainable success. The book demonstrates the various traits of a successful and high-performing analytics team and then delineates the path to achieve this with insights on the mindset, advanced analytics models, and predictions based on data analytics. It also emphasizes the significance of the macro and micro processes required to evolve in response to rapidly changing business needs. The book dives into the methods and practices of managing, developing, and leading an analytics team. Once you've brought the team up to speed, the book explains how to govern executive expectations and select winning projects. By the end of this book, you will have acquired the knowledge to create an effective business analytics team and develop a production environment that delivers ongoing operational improvements for your organization.
Table of Contents (14 chapters)
12
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13
Index

Building an analytics team and an environment for collaboration

You will need to hire a leader. You will need to empower and fund that leader to hire and lead a team. I refer to this team as the Advanced Analytics and Artificial Intelligence Center of Excellence (AA&AI COE). The COE leader and team will need to learn the broader organization and to build a network of collaborators, sponsors, and allies. This new network, which we will refer to as the Community of Practice, or COP, will span the entire organization and global operations. If your organization numbers in the thousands, the AA&AI COE will be less than 50 staff members within the first two years and the COP will be a few hundred in number.

The most recent COP that I built took approximately a year to reach critical mass and was made up of between 400 and 500 staff members spanning the globe, including every operational department in the company. I stopped counting after the first 14 months, but, in the first...