International Institute for Analytics

There is a tendency to jump into something called a “data strategy” without understanding what it is at its core. In IIA’s view, at the center of a data strategy is a schematic of an entity’s information economy1 with in-depth awareness of the constituent needs on the demand side of the economy — the data consumers. Because ultimately the primary purpose of a data strategy is to solve questions about how to improve the availability, timeliness and quality of data, in that order of priority, for the constituencies demanding it.

Inquiry:

I’m charged with driving analytic strategy, starting with formalizing an enterprise analytics function. We have scattered pockets of analytic capability. How do I ease these teams into the new paradigm?

Join Christopher Bergh as he presents the seven steps to get these groups of people working together. These seven steps contain practical, doable steps that can help you achieve data agility through DataOps. This presentation will illustrate how to make changes to big data, models, and visualizations quickly, with high quality, using the tools teams love. We synthesize techniques from DevOps, Deming, and direct experience.

Big Data and analytics are going to change in this COVID-19 era. In this Webinar, Jesse Anderson, leading expert in big data and related technologies and techniques, shares what he’s been telling his clients who call and ask, ‘Jesse, with all that’s going on what should we do now?’

Jesse explores a number of topics ranging from the implications of working from home to the tweaks that may be necessary to your current organizational models in the current economic climate.

My Immediate Response:

1. ALL HANDS ON DECK FOR OPERATIONAL REPORTING
   There will be new reporting needs and the frequency of information will need to speed up. Look for options and data that will be impacted by the current crisis. You will need to figure out how to quickly deliver information even if not perfect. Do the best you can, provide any glaring risks. Executives are starving for information. Make sure to provide the information to the most senior people first. Analytics teams can assist operations teams, data science people should even jump in as they have some of the best skills even if they are not using their modeling skills. Work with IT to pull information more quickly. Accept that you will be reporting off of sandboxes that are not production quality, get the exceptions from Risk and IT. You may need to time shift your team to earlier in the day as the executives will want things first thing when they come in if possible. Blend new data sets together to provide insights. Make sure to grab the customer feedback as even simple things like a word cloud may help.

Inquiry:

With our Agile transformation, there’s friction between IT and Analytics regarding project management responsibilities, and with the data scientists who don’t like Agile. How can we implement our Agile transformation to limit friction?

Inquiry:

Headcount is currently calculated in a number of different ways, and before we can move on to more interesting HR analytics we need to reconcile the headcount numbers across the enterprise. What’s the best way to work through this initial hurdle?

Inquiry:

We’re growing our analytics team from 10 to 25 people in the next year. In addition, we’re transitioning to an Agile approach and aiming toward operationalizing RPA. The current team consists of two data engineers, one project manager, one designer, three BI/visualization analysts, one QA specialist, and two product owners. Do you have any advice that will help ensure the team’s success?

Most analytics organizations at large companies do not own the entire lifecycle of their analytics applications. Instead, often-distributed analytical applications teams have to work with their partners in IT/IS organizations, as well as seek requirements, advice and consent from legal, compliance and governance functions within their organization. The essentially distributed nature of these work streams frequently results in inefficiencies or even full-on breakdowns in progressing an analytics application from proof of concept (PoC) to production. Success in distributed environments requires an overt, agreed-upon, stepwise plan along with the emotional intelligence to navigate the necessary conversations with your colleagues to build that plan.

We co-founded the International Institute for Analytics in 2010. Since it’s now 2020, our sophisticated math skills tell us that IIA has been around for about a decade—although our first full year of operation was in 2011. We thought it might be interesting to reflect on the state of the field that IIA addresses and how it has changed over time.