Moving Up the Analytics Maturity Ladder

The real work of chief analytics officers involves establishing a team suited for the organization's current level of maturity in the short term and leading efforts to move up the maturity ladder in the longer term. This chapter distinguishes between five maturity levels: firefighting, inspection, process view, quality by design, and learning and discovery. Firefighting reflects a heroic level of maturity of organizations, so chaotic that people cannot think beyond the short term. Organizations at the inspection maturity level have much data to analyze. Organizations with the process view require data collection, data analysis, and data presentation that include predictive analytics and online monitoring. In quality by design organizations, the data scientist understands the role of experimental design and is becoming proactive in the planning of interventions. Organizations at the learning and discovery maturity level are good at generating information of high quality.