Challenges in transforming business questions

Forming Analytical Questions

Konstantinos Kattidis

Data Analytics Lead

The importance of the translation process

Person looking at a whiteboard with graphs and goals.

Consider the following scenario:

1 - A business team raises a request to the analytics team with limited information.

2 - The analytics team quickly proceeds with the analysis.

3 - Delivers the solution to the business.

4 - The solution provided does not solve the business problem.

Person thinking the challenges of analytics

Three people communicating ideas

The business questions often are given in business terms, and do not provide enough information.

Ideal approach: Both teams exchange a series of questions and clarifications.

Aim: Understand the business goals, target audience, and constraints or limitations.

Three people communicating ideas

Cause:

On the left, a business person looking at business goals. On the right, data, coding and algorithms.

Business teams are often not clear about how data driven analytics methods can help achieve their goals.

Cause: The large conceptual distance between:

Business strategies, and processes.

And..

Data and algorithms.

On the left, a business person looking at business goals. On the right, data, coding and algorithms.

Analysts are often stuck in their local view, focused deep in the data and algorithms.
They focus on the solution, for example clustering or classification from the beginning.
Both sides have different goals and processes.

There may be various analytical solutions that could potentially be used.
Difficulty choosing the one that is most appropriate for the data and the business question.

Woman making a decision when looking at different paths.

A business person talking with an analyst to bridge the gap.

We need a set of best practices that will enable:

Forming Analytical Questions