The Analytics Lifecycle Toolkit

Acknowledgments

This work would not have been possible without the support of my colleagues and clients who gave me the space to write. I am especially indebted to Monica Horvath, PhD, for picking up the pieces I dropped along the way. Not only did she provide scrutiny during technical review of this book, but was my sounding board and co-conspirator for the past several years at ThotWave as we helped clients improve the “people and process side of analytics.” Much of the content around organizational design and our analytics competency model was rooted in these efforts.

I am grateful to all of those with whom I have had the pleasure to work during this project. I learn from each of my clients at ThotWave and my professional colleagues throughout the industry as they continue to teach me a great deal about the real-world implications of analytics and the real struggles that organizations have.

I am indebted to those who agreed to review drafts of this book. In particular, I want to thank Anne Milley from JMP Software; Marc Vaglio-Luarin, analytics product manager from Qlik Software; Linda Burtch, founder of Burtch Works; Mark Tabladillo, lead data scientist from Microsoft; Randy Betancourt from Accenture; Robert Gladden, chief analytics officer at Highmark Health; Mary Beth Ainsworth, product marketing at SAS for artificial intelligence and text analytics; and Teddy Benson from the Walt Disney Company. Your contributions to this work made it a better product.

I would especially ...