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

Where is the value in a project?

As I noted at the end of the Introduction section of this book, I am endlessly curious about all things – all people, anthropology, psychology, processes, products, history, science, economics, and more. One of the problems with being intrigued by a wide range of topics is that you may allow the analytics team to chase down projects and areas just because they are fun to learn about; this is not a good idea.

Of course, there will be topics and subjects that are tangentially related to the business problems and challenges that you and your colleagues are facing, and running down a few wild ideas never hurt anyone, but if it is a regular occurrence, the productivity of the team, and your credibility, will suffer.

It is always good to place context around analytics and analytics projects in the early stages of a relationship with an executive and business sponsor. They have pet projects and personal interests too. Recently, I was in a meeting...