analytics and witch doctoring: a cure for the black box mentality
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Analytics and Witch Doctoring: A Cure for the Black Box Mentality. February 1, 2011 O’Reilly Strata Conference J.C. Herz, Batchtags LLC [email protected]. Analytics: An Intervention. Original Sin. Enterprise Pathologies. Critical Questions. Analytics: Occult Phenomenon. Very powerful - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
Analytics and Witch Doctoring: A Cure for the Black Box
Mentality
February 1, 2011
O’Reilly Strata Conference
J.C. Herz, Batchtags LLC
Analytics: An Intervention
• Original Sin
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Enterprise Pathologies Critical Questions
Analytics: Occult Phenomenon
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Very powerful
Don’t understand it
Practitioners possess arcane knowledge
Alchemy
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SecretAlgorithms
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Greek Letters Are Your Kryptonite
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High Status Helplessness
• If you understood the technology, you’d be one of those people whose job it is to make technology work.
• You know, underlings
Executive ADD - Kaching!
• Re-starts are where consulting shops make their money
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Mid-Life Crisis
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Shiny Pebble Syndrome
• Infoviz Porn: Visualization with no use case– Ex: Social Network visualization. Why?– START with a use case and work
forward
• Demo Envy: just because it looks slick doesn’t mean it’s possible, or even advisable, to pipe your data into it.
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A Ballad of Spectacular Information Display
• Time Magazine 1976• Telex text routing:
information off the wire goes to terminals, properly foldered
• Z8 terminal display awes executives
• Pneumatic system not eliminated
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Technical Reality vs. Leadership Attention Span
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Half Ass Syndrome
• Halfway into the project, jump off into the next problem.
• Haven’t refined results or hypothesis
• Failure blamed on technology, but it’s really loss of interest and desire for instant gratification
Shelfware Syndrome
• The guy who was driving the program left...
• Approach-Avoidance conflict --> pilot-itis
• A US agency has $30M of software that hasn’t been installed…some of it with maintenance contracts.
• Base Model vs. Fully Loaded– One enterprise bought $12M worth of
Autonomy before figuring out that the add-ons they needed would be another $22M.
Customization Before Testing
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Critical Question: What is the Validation Test?
• Formulating the validation test keeps both the customer and the developer focused - and honest
• Suggest pay for performance, and see if the developer or vendor freaks out.
• Make sure validation is ongoing - in case the ground is shifting
Data Due Diligence & Auditing
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Shame
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Shame
Ugly Babies
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Critical Question: Data Quality
• How complete is it?
– Ex: 600 custom fields, only two have more than 50% coverage
• How accurate is it? How do you know?
• How consistent is it?
– Good test: make three calls to different parts of the company, to get an answer to a factual question that doesn’t require calculation.
Critical Question: Half-Life of Data
• How long is the data accurate?
• How long is the data useful?
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Critical Question: Real World Context
• Without real world data, “behavioral” metrics are misleading
• Where is the transactional data that validates insights from non-transactional data?
• How would you prove the magic analytics WRONG?
• Are you prepared to spend painful amounts of money cleaning up your data?
• Crack heads if people don’t share data?
• Make business units accountable for their data?
• Play hardball to make sure data is not stored in single-application proprietary formats?
Data: Gut Check
Critical Questions: Workflow
• What workflow changes will this proposed capability require?
• People hate changing their workflow, even if it’s an improvement
• Never attribute to stupidity what can be attributed to laziness
• What is your plan for changing workflow? How do you enforce it?
The perfect application that no-one uses is still worthless
Process
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Politics
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What are you prepared to do?
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Critical Question: Consequences
• What actions are you willing to take on the basis of validated analytic insight?– Change your product?– Change your marketing budget?– Change people’s job descriptions?– Re-allocate R&D budgets?
• What actions are you not willing to take?
Stakes
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Critical Question: Tempo
• How fast will a decision be made on the basis of analytic insight?
• Quarterly?
• Daily?
• Within seconds?
• Milliseconds?
• Never?
• Realtime vs. Continuous vs. Batch
Precision vs. Accuracy
When precision exceeds accuracy, you’re setting yourself up for analytic failure
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OODA Loop
Which of these does an analytic tool/technology do?
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Before You Rip ‘n’ Replace:
What is the exit cost of this technology?
Does “turnkey” mean monoculture?
Business Payoff vs. Intellectual Appeal
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Social Network Analysis
Operations Research
Market Segmentation
Competitive Intelligence
Pilots to test new analyst tools with tiny amounts of generic data
360º Lead Scoring
Validate Marketing Effectiveness
Questions?
• J.C. Herz [email protected] (202) 213-3151
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Base Model vs. Fully Loaded
“Never attribute to stupidity what can be explained by
laziness.”
Ugly Babies & Pretty Babies
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