The Analytics Lifecycle Toolkit

CHAPTER 2The People of Analytics

Developing talent is business's most important task—the sine qua non of competition in a knowledge economy.

Peter F. Drucker

WHO DOES ANALYTICS?

Some experts may relegate the land of analytics to the chosen few—the mathematicians, statisticians, and computer scientists who develop sophisticated algorithms. I disagree. That is the realm of data science and indeed a sophisticated and rewarding field. My view is that almost anyone can “do” analytics. It is true that the level of education and quantitative training can prepare you for using advanced methods, but analytics is a team sport. Decisions are made throughout the organization and what often gets overlooked is the fact that two distinct processes are in action: the decision lifecycle and the analytics lifecycle. As Figure 2.1 shows, this linkage informs how the analytics needs of the organization are to be serviced.

Figure 2.1 The analytics lifecycle supports the decision lifecycle.

Problem solving is not a unique endeavor—we do it every day. While some are better than others, the skill can be learned, developed, and coached. Some would suggest that data scientists are on one end of the spectrum and business users on the other, with the citizen data scientist sitting in between (Figure 2.2). Gartner defines a citizen data scientist (Moore, 2017) as “a person who creates or generates ...