How to Dig into Your Data the Right Way: Part 2

by chuckennis

Our answer is two-fold: from the “top-down,” (See April: Volume 2: Part 1) and in parallel, from the “bottom-up.” Today we discuss the Bottom-up approach to digging into your data.

Bottom-up – think of data as rocks, stones and pebbles, that are stuffed into a large container that you can shake. Rocks move the least amount, are fewest, and are most easily identifiable and describable. There are more stones in the container than rocks, but the stones are harder to see and classify, and are more easily moveable and manipulated. Finally, the pebbles. Pebbles are most malleable, numerous, diverse, and…. are hidden everywhere inside the container. From a bottoms-up perspective, pebbles are what you should be after. You must identify all the varieties of data (rocks, stones and pebbles) that are available for analysis within your group and across your organization, and of course the ease (or difficulty) of accessing the data (or snapshots of the data.) This data assessment is critical in order to establish the opportunities and constraints you will have in achieving success against your Top-Down strategic objectives. Executing your plan depends on knowing how many rocks, stones and pebbles within your data pool to analyze. The degrees of freedom made possible through data analysis, and the overall value of your data analytics roadmap, has orders of magnitude potential, based on how “granular” your data is, or can become. To recap, we continue to recommend digging into your data requires integration of a “top-down,” and a “bottoms-up” approach. If you need some assistance in these areas, let us know!