Ted Cuzzillo, writing at TDWI and citing Blake Johnson of Stanford, identifies 6 conditions for [or barriers to] the rise of business analysts:
1. The best analysts are skilled in three areas: First, they engage stakeholders and have an eye for business opportunity. Second, they inspire stakeholders’ trust with consistently excellent analysis. Third, “big data” requires skill with data management and software engineering.
This paints a similar but not identical picture to Drew Conway’s Data Scientist Venn Diagram. The key point of difference is that Conway places more weight on mathematical and statistical training, which is not the same thing as “consistently excellent analysis”, but is more important than is often assumed in enabling it.
2. Each analyst’s skills should be about 80 percent in data management and about 20 percent in business and analytics — but Johnson expects that to change over the next five or 10 years as tools make data management easier. Eventually the mix of skills will be the opposite: 20 percent data management and 80 percent business.
I have no strong view on this, but my intuition is that data wrangling will always consume far more time and effort than analysis. Analysis is a feedback loop and a read-write activity. Standardisation and automation continue to consolidate efficiencies but these tend to raise the analytical bar. That said, I’d be happy for future tools to prove me wrong.
3. Gaining a foothold within an organization is best done in small bites with an entrepreneurial approach. Forget trying for a “big bang,” he says. Instead, find a need and fill it quickly, then move on to others. Identify and solve one business problem after another — always making sure to keep your methods scalable.
This agrees with Analyst First’s contention, seconded by others, that the monolithic IT project approach doesn’t work, and that—within an existing organisation—a bottom-up Lean Startup approach is your best bet. The only exceptions to this are analytic-centric online startups and quantitative hedge funds.
4. Location of analysts’ workspace matters. They should work in a cluster for critical mass, which encourages sharing of best practices and support. If they sit within business teams, their work becomes more visible.
This makes sense. Isolated analysts are a problem whether they’re isolated from each other or from management oversight and direction. Generally speaking, senior executives need to be broadened while analysts need to be narrowed. Middle managers need to be skilled up to bridge between the two.
5. It’s an adjustment for everyone — on the business side but especially on the IT side. It means fundamental changes in the way data is organized and managed, and accessed and used, with both new technologies and skill sets.
6. Many IT pros deny access to data based on obsolete knowledge. Johnson reports that many don’t know about modern load-balancing and other technology that make such access safer.
Certainly true. I’ve written before about the data needs of analysts as distinct from traditional business intelligence consumers, and also observed that big data is at once driving up the need for advanced analytics and rendering traditional data warehousing approaches obsolete. But the odd part about the commonly invoked ‘IT vs business’ balance of power is the acceptance of IT as a ‘stakeholder’ as opposed to an enabler. It’s unquestionably the case that analytics doesn’t happen without software, but that’s just as true of accounting, graphic design, and most other activities conducted in front of computers in today’s workplace. It simply doesn’t follow that IT deserves, so to speak, a seat on the Security Council.
Cuzzillo closes well aware of both the future possibilities for Business Analytics, and the status quo political realities standing in its way:
You would think that both sides would sign up for the bargain the new middlemen [i.e. analysts] seem to offer. IT would cede control and concentrate on what it does best, managing the back end. Meanwhile, business stakeholders would get insights from these newly empowered, eager specialists. Analysts would be newly ready to answer business questions, conjure up new questions, and offer strategic options.
Analysts would colonize what had been the no-man’s-land between IT and business. Trouble is, the analysts may end up ruining the neighborhood for them. If the strategies Johnson suggests work, IT and business would find a new power growing alongside them. Analysts — simply from the position they would find themselves in, not from any wish to rule the world — would be indispensible, powerful, and well funded.
Who wouldn’t want that?
Related Analyst First posts:
- Analytics Education and Recruitment – Builders vs Finders
- Analysis is read-write
- Forrester on the need for agility
- Analytics Is… A Lean Startup Enterprise
- *Why Software Is Eating The World*
- The data needs of analysts
- Big data as an advanced analytics driver
- *Building for Yesterday’s Future*
- *The Elusive Definition of Agile Analytics*
If you enjoyed this article, please consider sharing it!
Follow Us!
