Where is the value in a project?
As I noted at the end of the Introduction section of this book, I am endlessly curious about all things – all people, anthropology, psychology, processes, products, history, science, economics, and more. One of the problems with being intrigued by a wide range of topics is that you may allow the analytics team to chase down projects and areas just because they are fun to learn about; this is not a good idea.
Of course, there will be topics and subjects that are tangentially related to the business problems and challenges that you and your colleagues are facing, and running down a few wild ideas never hurt anyone, but if it is a regular occurrence, the productivity of the team, and your credibility, will suffer.
It is always good to place context around analytics and analytics projects in the early stages of a relationship with an executive and business sponsor. They have pet projects and personal interests too. Recently, I was in a meeting...
