Here is a roundup of interesting sites, resources, and articles from around the web, curated by IIA. Highlights from this month’s edition include great articles on building data science teams, data storytelling, 5 effective coding habits for data scientists, A/B testing, and communicating with business stakeholders. Follow us on Twitter (@iianalytics) and LinkedIn to receive daily updates on IIA content and curated content as it becomes available.
Featured Article from Analytics Leadership Consortium Newsletter
Each month, IIA’s Analytics Leadership Consortium (ALC) publishes a newsletter featuring reviews of timely and relevant 3rd party articles. Here is one of the articles highlighted in a previous newsletter.
Why it’s Difficult to Build Teams in High Growth Organizations
IIA’s Article Summary:
It can be difficult to manage teams in a rapidly growing organization. It is a tough act to balance team growth and product/project delivery while developing a healthy team culture. Building entirely new teams means low productivity to start, adding new people to existing teams makes teams too big to be efficient. The author proposes adding new team members with alertness to when the team size has become unwieldy. Read the full article here.
IIA Recommends:
- Watch teams carefully avoiding stringent rules of thumb (like no team bigger than 9) and accept that some products need bigger teams and some smaller teams.
- As soon as the signs that a team is too big (like sub-teaming, communication breakdowns, etc) appear, split the team. Since the growth is so fast those now smaller teams won’t be that way for long.
- As you split teams work to ensure a common culture by balancing the team retaining people who are role models for the culture and those who are drivers of the systems that underpin your desired culture.
Featured Articles on Analytics Strategy
10 Ways to Unleash Enterprise Innovation (Information Week)
Fostering a culture of innovation is critical for analytics success. Here are 10 ways to support innovation in your organization.
Models of Enterprise Intelligence (Thoughtworks)
This article explores an insightful framework for data-driven organizations and introduces the concept of the Enterprise Intelligence Maturity Model.
How Analytics Maturity Models are Stunting Data Science Teams (Towards Data Science)
3 potential pitfalls associated with analytics maturity frameworks and insights on how to avoid them.
Shifting From ‘What’ To ‘Why’: How Data Storytelling Unlocks Your Data’s Full Potential (Forbes)
Organizations are struggling to unlock business value from their data and storytelling can help. IIA Expert Brett Dykes outlined 4 steps for driving storytelling adoption.
Crossing The Chasm Between Data Science and Impact (Towards Data Science)
5 recommendations for closing the gap between business stakeholders and analytics teams: 1.) Allocate sufficient time for insight creation, 2.) Iterate and polish, 3.) Find a sparring partner, 4.) Invest in building context, 5.) Continuous Improvement.
Featured Articles on Analytics Leadership and Talent
How to Build Your Data Analytics Team (Towards Data Science)
This article outlines a framework for determining how big your analytics team should be, what types of roles should be on the team, and how the team should be structure.
How to Build an Analytics Team for Impact in an Organization (Toward Data Science)
This 6-step analytics value lifecycle informs how analytics teams should operate, what skills are required, how teams should be structured and what types of profiles and skills should be present on the teams.
Featured Articles on Data and Analytics Technology
How to Explain Complex Technology Issues to Business Leaders (Information Week)
Promising digital and analytics initiatives can only succeed with enthusiastic management support. Here's how you can help business leaders understand why technology is necessary for long-term competitive success.
Coding Habits for Data Scientists (Thoughtworks)
Five great tips for reducing code complexity and increasing quality: 1.) Keep code clean, 2.) Use functions to abstract away complexity, 3.) Get out of Jupyter notebooks as soon as possible, 4.) Apply test-driven development, and 5.) Make small and frequent commits
Featured Articles with Analytics Uses and Case Studies
A/B Testing: A Complete Guide to Statistical Testing (Towards Data Science)
A/B testing is one of the most popular methods for optimizing web marketing strategies. This article provides an in-depth exploration of how different statistical methods can be used to make A/B testing successful.
A New Generation of AI-powered Robots is Taking Over Warehouses (MIT Technology Review)
Within a few years, any task that previously required hands to perform could be partially or fully automated away. This will significantly impact e-commerce, manufacturing, shipping, and logistics.
How Big Data Carried Graph Theory into New Dimensions (Wired)
Detailed overview of how new hypergraphs leverage the mathematics of higher-order interactions to better model the complex connections within data.
How AI Can Help Companies Set Prices More Ethically (Harvard Business Review)
Good article on how to make sure that supercharged precision in pricing doesn't go from opportunistic to predatory.
Featured Articles on AI
Continuous Delivery for Machine Learning (Thoughtworks)
This article provides an overview of the key elements required for implementing continuous delivery for machine learning applications.
Four Key Steps to Simplify Enterprise AI Success (eWeek)
This article outlines four key steps to simply enterprise AI success: 1.) use proven tools, 2.) tap proven expertise and platforms, 3.) leverage hybrid approaches, and 4.) build an AI center of excellence.
AI Regulation Is Coming (Harvard Business Review)
As firms embed artificial intelligence in products and processes, more attention is being placed on the potential for bad or biased decisions by algorithms. This article explains the moves regulators are most likely to make and the three main challenges businesses need to consider as they adopt and integrate AI.
Featured Resources and Blog Sites
Roger Martin provides management, business, and strategy perspectives relevant to analytics leaders trying to drive change within their organizations.
Visualization and analytics insights from Tableau.
Featured News and Information Sites
Quanta Magazine - @QuantaMagazine
IIA recommends Quanta Magazine for interesting and in-depth articles on mathematics, computer science, AI and quantum computing.
eWeek - @eWEEKNews
eWeek is an IT-oriented publication that also has a good section on Big Data and analytics.
InformationWeek - @InformationWeek
InformationWeek is an IT-oriented publication that features relevant articles on Big Data, analytics, the Cloud and unlocking the business value of technology.
About IIA
IIA is the industry’s leading source of insights and advisory services for companies transitioning to data-driven decision-making and advanced analytics. IIA continuously seeks out insights, information and experts to elevate our client’s and our community’s analytics expertise through two service lines. IIA's Research and Advisory Network (RAN) provides clients with access to the world's largest analytics-focused expert network; a resource designed to accelerate analytics teams' progress against their projects and initiatives. IIA’s Analytics Leadership Consortium is a closed network of analytics executives from diverse industries who meet to share and discuss best practices, as well as discover and develop analytics innovation, all for the purpose of improving the business impact of analytics at their firms. IIA’s family of analytics assessments provide actionable, diagnostic insights for organizations looking to maximize their analytics performance.