Data Analytics Life Cycle
Data Analytics Life Cycle
Phase 1—Discovery
• The team learns the business domain, including relevant history such
as whether the organization or business unit has attempted similar
projects in the past from which they can learn.
• The team assesses the resources available to support the project in
terms of people, technology, time, and data.
• Important activities in this phase include
• framing the business problem as an analytics challenge that can be addressed
in subsequent phases and
• formulating initial hypotheses to test and begin learning the data.
Phase 2—Data preparation
• Phase 2 requires the presence of an analytic sandbox, in which the team
can work with data and perform analytics for the duration of the project.
• The team needs to execute
• extract, load, and transform (ELT) or
• extract, transform and load (ETL) to get data into the sandbox.
• The ELT and ETL are sometimes abbreviated as ETLT.
• Data should be transformed in the ETLT process so the team can work with
it and analyze it.
• In this phase, the team also needs to familiarize itself with the data
thoroughly and take steps to condition the data
Phase 3—Model planning
• The team determines the methods, techniques, and workflow it
intends to follow for the subsequent model building phase.
• The team explores the data
• to learn about the relationships between variables and
• subsequently selects key variables and the most suitable models.
Phase 4—Model building
• The team develops datasets for testing, training, and production
purposes.
• The team builds and executes models based on the work done in the
model planning phase.
• The team also considers whether
• its existing tools will suffice for running the models, or
• if it will need a more robust environment for executing models and workflows
(for example, fast hardware and parallel processing, if applicable).
Phase 5—Communicate results
• The team, in collaboration with major stakeholders,
• determines if the results of the project are a success or a failure based on the
criteria developed in Phase 1.
• The team should
• identify key findings
• quantify the business value
• develop a narrative to summarize
• convey findings to stakeholders.
Phase 6—Operationalize
• The team delivers final reports, briefings, code, and technical
documents.
• Also, the team may run a pilot project to implement the models in a
production environment.