Understanding the Predictive Analytics Lifecycle

Preface

People get excited about big data and business analytics. That might sound ridiculous, but I’m not kidding. Over the years, I have traveled everywhere from Brazil to Japan working on analytics, and in every country, I have found a particularly peculiar brand of analytic fanaticism. These analysts are hilarious and downright exciting!

I wrote this book to help business and IT professionals understand the predictive analytics lifecycle. A reader can get a sense for the entire predictive cycle and therefore avoid potential risks. Often folks who work in a particular area of the analytics cycle—for example, analysis—have little understanding of another area, such as integration. This situation sometimes creates confusions, poor communication, and delays. This book has seven chapters, which illustrate a complete cycle from idea definition to feedback.

In each chapter, I added notes at the end with examples. The first chapter concentrates on the initial stages of defining the problem at hand and how to get the business customer to quantify the overall business value of the project. The note file contains a sample nondisclosure agreement. Chapter 2, the design chapter, focuses on the planning process. It shows how to define various components of the scope, such as what organizations are affected, what to expect, and the type of information required. The note file has a sample project for a data warehouse performance management project. Chapter 3, the integration chapter, discusses ...