The Keys to Repeatable and Scalable Analysis

Have you ever put together some analysis only to have your stakeholders say, “This is great, can I get this every month?”  Or have you ever thought, “this report takes too much time to build every week, I wish there was a way to shorten the amount of time I spend putting this report together?”  If you have, this episode is for you.  Tune in to hear some tips that will help you create repeatable analysis.

Timeline:
01:41 - The Goal of Analysis
04:54 - Minimizing Technical Debt
06:46 - Eliminate Manual Touches
09:28 - Consider How You Use Filters
11:08 - Combine Data Sources First
11:48 - Set Up a Framework or Template
13:02 - Use Consistent Naming Conventions
14:35 - Document Your Process
15:40 - The Last Record

The Last Record:

1. The goal of any analysis is to provide actionable insights.  Be sure to keep this in mind as you are building any reports
2. Strive to minimize the technical debt and technical interest.  That’s the time needed to re-do portions of any analysis in order to do it properly, or the time needed to refresh the data on a regular basis.
   • Avoid manual touches - this could be data pulls, or even hand keying in information into a spreadsheet.
   • Put filters up front, and remove as much data as possible in the first filter, and each subsequent filter should remove less and less data.
   • Set up a framework so you only have to update the raw data, and not rebuild a summary or data visualization
   • Watch out for your naming conventions
     • Be consistent with how you name your fields throughout your workflow
3. Document your steps and process.  Your future self will thank you for saving pain and heartache trying to figure out why you created the process the way you did.