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 a supportive and engaged team

What do analytics professionals want their working days to look like? What do professionals who are engaged in advanced analytics want from their projects, teams, and leaders? Multi-faceted and meaningful questions, those are. A bit of Yoda there for you, Star Wars fans…

Let's start with where we just arrived in the previous section. Let's begin with assessing and understanding how to lead the team that you have. You must be aware that not all analytics teams are the same. The mix of skills and abilities of team members will, to some extent, dictate the projects you can undertake, how quickly you can move, and the level of impact you and your team can have on the firm. You need to understand the current technical, professional, and soft skills of the team and the teams that are ancillary to the core analytics team.

Traditionally, analytics teams were comprised of a significant number of highly autonomous individual contributors...