The Importance Of Asking The Right Questions
Carla Gentry
Data Scientist/Contractor/Influencer @ Analytical-Solution | Certified Scrum Product Owner
Each time I talk to someone about analytics, I ask the same question: “What is your ultimate goal with this project?” Often it is to increase sales or reduce turnover. Of course, this isn’t usually what’s said; initially all I get is a panicked look that says “we can’t get what we want out of our database—it isn’t working right…how do we fix it??”
Typically, there is nothing wrong with the database: the master and all its clones are just as they were designed to be, the variables are entered correctly and the reporting functions are pulling exactly what they were coded and designed to pull.
So what’s the issue?
Every HRIS or ATS database contains different information (employee addresses, phone numbers, salaries, benefits, and the like), but how much of that information is connected? What I mean is: is there a unique quantifier that connects each table or database together? If I want to select all the people who might retire in the next 5 years out of a database, complete with demographic, sales and personal information, in order to create an organizational plan for this, can I accomplish this with my current database? By design relational databases are just that: “relational.” Therefore, everything should flow, if set up correctly in the very beginning.
Which brings us back to asking the right questions—which might look a bit like these:
- What is it really that I want to be able to answer with my data collection?
- Structured vs unstructured data, am I asking the right questions and giving them choices or offering a space to add comments (be careful of this)? Example a) agree b) disagree c( unsure —– Can I work with unstructured data?
- Are you offering incentives to employees or candidates to “complete additional info” as to glean a more complete pictures of your customer? (5 dollar iTunes or Starbucks card)
- Do I want to link social data to what I collect from employees? (3rd party sign in via Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc)
- Are you including IT in your business meetings?
A gap analysis usually reports on what is missing, but it doesn’t have to be this way (reactive and not proactive). If you ask the right questions initially, your design and results will reflect this. Know what you are trying to accomplish.
If you say “my database is broken,” but what you really mean is “I need to be able to sustain sales throughout the next five years; I’m concerned with increasing what we have in the pipeline,” well, ask for help. Make sure you have the correct data to indicate your sales reps selling habits, including seasonality. What data does your sales department have that can help you answer these and many other questions?
Do you have store performance, or other line of business performance data to help form a more three dimensional view of your candidates or employees? A data-centric view is so valuable, but unless you ask the right questions when collecting your data and setting up your database, you may end up trying to build a predictive model using only name, address and phone number! As Chief Engineer Scotty Montgomery of the USS Enterprise might say, “I can’t do it captain!”
Principal information architect & diagnostician at Ripose Pty Limited
7 年My thanks to Dr Nicolas Figay for liking this and Carla Gentry for writing this article. Asking the right question at the right time will reveal the right answer if and only if you know what answer you are looking for. If you do not know what you are looking for then it makes no difference what question you ask. There are only 19 questions that need ever be asked in order to cover the entire gamut of any business. Every question provides the answer and delivers 'knowledge'. To give you a clue, when you ask the question 'What are you dealing with?; you will find that the answer is 'Offerings'. Now try to find the remaining 18 and you will be well on the way to solving the dilemma of poor database design. The only other problem is that every question has a variety of answers (or sub answers). For example, ask the question What is an Offering? and you will find the answers it is either a Product, Service or Package (which is a combination of products and services or products and products or services and services). If you want to solve problems, get your knowledge model right and you will have no more problems with your data base design. For the sign of a broken database is a clear indicator that the wrong questions were asked, even if they were asked at the right time. Data is not an answer. A Datum is a fact which supports a question and the right question will provide the right answer. But what do I know? Regards
Project Manager IT Infrastructure - Retired
8 年Ask he question, then ask it again, and again as may times as necessary to get to and understand the real requirement.
Software Engineer
8 年What do you mean by "master and all of its clones" in the second paragraph, Carla?
Executive Vice President, Data Analytics | EB-1A Recipient | 40 Under 40 Data Scientist | Advisory Board Member
8 年Socrates Principle - Ask the right questions. Very true for any kind of problem solving / consulting work! Completely agree with you Carla Gentry!!