6 Phases of Data Analytics Lifecycle Every Data Analyst Should Know About
In today’s article, we will discuss the 6 phases of data analytics life cycle every data analyst must understand. Let’s get started.
Discovery and Creation of Data
Having a clear objective in mind is the first step. By the time you get to this point in the data analytics lifecycle, you will have determined the goals you set out to accomplish with your data and how you plan to use it to get there.
The first step is to settle on a target. At this point in the data analytics lifecycle, you will have determined your data's ultimate goal and established a plan to get there. First, we'll examine the situation so that we can formulate a working hypothesis on how to fix the issues plaguing our company. In the first phase, you'll sketch out the data's possible applications and needs, including the data's sources, the story you hope it will tell, and the advantages your business will reap from having access to it.
To succeed as a data analyst, you must first familiarize yourself with the company industry, then look into similar data analytics case studies, and last analyze the most recent business trends. You must then evaluate your own organization's infrastructure, resources, time, and technology in light of this new information. After the assessments are complete, the team will come up with hypotheses to test with the collected data in the next stage.
This is a crucial first step in the process of analyzing big data. As a data analysis professional, your primary concern shouldn't be the data itself, but rather the needs of the business regarding the data. Your job description also includes evaluating the resources required to interpret, sort, and process the mountain of incoming information.
Data Preparation and Processing
All data-related processes occur at this step. Experts' focus shifts from business requirements to data requirements in phase 2. The data collection, processing, and cleaning process are known as "data preparation and processing." In this stage, it is crucial to check that all necessary data is accessible and ready to be processed. In a business ecosystem, gathering useful data is the first step in the data preparation phase that leads to the data analytics lifecycle.
These techniques are used to collect data:
● Data Acquisition: Gathering data from various external sources.
● Data Entry: Creating up-to-date informational indicators through the use of electronic or manual data input methods in the workplace.
● Signal Reception: Taking in data from computer-based sources including control systems and the Internet of Things.
Analytical sandboxes are essential during the data preparation phase of the big data analytics life cycle. Data analysts and data scientists utilize this scalable platform to do data processing. Data that has been executed, loaded, and turned into the analytical sandbox is now available for exploration. There is no strict timeline for the business analytical cycle, and this particular phase can be repeated whenever necessary.
Model Designing
You can start building a model to put your data to use once you have defined your company's goals and amassed a large amount of data (whether structured, unstructured, or semi-structured). Planning a model is done at this analytics point.
Several methods exist to enter data into the system and begin analyzing it:
● Extract, Transform, and Load (or ETL) transforms the data first using a set of business rules, before loading it into a sandbox.
● Extract, Load, and Transform (or ELT) first loads raw data into the sandbox and then transforms it.
● Extract, Transform, Load, Transform (or ETLT) is a combination and has two transformation levels
A collaborative effort is required at this stage to settle on the strategies, tools, and process flows that will be used to construct the model in the next. Finding the connection between data points is the first step in developing a model, which will be used to narrow down the variables and arrive at a good fit.
The team creates data sets for use in testing, training, and actual data production. The following steps include the creation and implementation of the models developed in earlier rounds.
Building the Model
Building data sets for use in analytics at each of the three stages of development (testing, training, and production) falls under this category. Following the careful creation of a model, data analytics specialists then painstakingly construct and maintain said model.
To construct and carry out the model, they rely on tools and a variety of methodologies, such as decision trees, regression techniques, and neural networks. Moreover, the specialists test the model to see if it accurately represents the facts. This gives them insight into whether the resources at hand are adequate to execute the model, or whether a more powerful system is required.
Communicating the Result and Publication
Do you recall the initial stage aim that you set for your company? Now that you've performed your tests, you can see if they pass the previous phase's requirements or not. To establish if the project was successful or unsuccessful, the team must first collaborate with major stakeholders during the communication phase.
The project team must extract the most important insights from the study, quantify the business value of the outcome, and write a narrative to communicate the findings to the relevant parties.
Effectiveness Measurement
Delivering a comprehensive report to stakeholders outlining significant findings, coding, briefings, and technical papers/documents is the final phase in your data analytics lifecycle. In addition, the data is transferred from the sandbox to the live environment and monitored to see if the outcomes correspond to the anticipated business aim.
Assuming the results are consistent with the goals, the reports can be finished. But let's say phase 2 results differ from phase 1's goals. Changes in input can be reflected in a corresponding shift in output by regressing through the data analytics lifecycle to any earlier stage. If the model has limitations in its performance, the development team will go back and fix those issues before releasing it to the public.
Final Words
We reach the final parts of the article, having discussed the 6 phases of data analytics lifecycle. If you found this interesting and see yourself in this domain, upskill yourself with Skillslash's Data Science course in Delhi and Data Science course in Mangalore with a placement guarantee today. Skillslash also offers Data Science course in Nagpur. Contact the support team to know more.
