What Every Manager Should Know About Big Data and Data Science

By: Lars Nielsen, Noreen Burlingame, Robert Masters

Narrated by: Mindy Grall

The need for precise, actionable, real-time Business Intelligence (BI) lies at the heart of the role of Big Data in modern commerce. In turn, the art of Data Science lies at the nexus of Big Data and BI, providing the essential methods by which BI can be extracted from Big Data's great black mass of constantly flowing, unstructured information.

This combination has a created a new profession: an elite and specialized class of highly-compensated professionals specially skilled at data cleaning, analysis, and visualization. We call them Data Scientists, and their evolving role in the organization is one about which managers must have a clear understanding.

Integrating Data Scientists with your organization is often a delicate process involving the redefinition of traditional roles within the enterprise and dealing with issues of territoriality amongst peers.

To accomplish this task, managers need a firm knowledge of the what and whys of Data Science, the specific BI needs it is uniquely positioned to service, and the processes by which it functions.

Such is the knowledge this important book provides.

©2016 New Street Communications, LLC (P)2016 New Street Communications, LLC

A good quick little book but perhaps too much on specific technologies vendors

I was looking for a book that would help be communicate these principles to line managers and to help me help them better. I give it a B+/A-. It started strong, really explaining what managers should now, but about 3/4 the way through went down a rabbit hole of explaining specific technologies and vendors, all of which in a few years will change. I would not expect any manager (aside those in analytics or a data center) to know half of this, let alone every manager. That made the title seem slightly misleading. The good news is this is so short so that was not too much time.

Vital information clearly explained

Introducing Big Data and Data Science practices into the legacy enterprise is a complex and challenging task. Nielsen & co. provide solid explanations of just what the problems and pitfalls are, and how to avoid them. An extremely valuable "listen." (And the narration is excellent as well.)