Operationalizing the Data Lake

Chapter 10. Considerations for the Data Analyst

The mission of the data analyst within the data team is to apply analytics techniques to solve relevant business problems and to gain business insights that the company can use to make decisions.

Data analysts share this mission with the data scientists, but analysts are closer to the business. In fact, typically data analysts are located within the lines of business. You could even call them line-of-business users. They report up to an intelligence director for a specific line of business as well as to a general manager. This means that they have a very strong operational understanding of the business.

They also tend to know the bottlenecks or choke points of the business, by virtue of where they sit and what they do on a daily basis.

They are not statisticians, and they are not data scientists. But what they bring is a business-oriented analytical mindset. They can do early hypothesis testing, for instance. They can approach a data scientist and say, “Hey, here is a sample of data that is representative of my business. If I were to take this data sample and run some experiments, I could make a difference in how my department operates.” Their job is primarily testing, identifying opportunities, and then passing that information on to people who can take action on that insight.

Data analysts always need a clear business goal toward which to work. Rather than doing “exploratory” work on data, it is essential that they have a solid ...