Hitchhiker’s Guide to Analytics — Bypasses
You’ve got to build bypasses
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is such a wholly remarkable book, recently outselling even the Encyclopedia Galactica, telling such an incredibly expansive story that spans the unbelievable vastness of space and time and probability, that many of us manage to forget how simply the story begins.
It begins with a house.
It’s not even a particular nice house, although Arthur happens to like it.
On this particular Thursday, however, this rather ordinary house becomes the focal point of a standoff between Arthur Dent and a construction crew being managed by Mr L Prosser of the local town planning council.
Mr Prosser was, as they say, only human. He was a rather ordinary man who, curiously enough, was also a direct male-line descendant of Ghengis Khan, but that matters in no way to the books or to this article.
Mr Prosser was there to demolish Arthur’s house to make room for a new bypass. When Arthur asked why the bypass had to be built, Mr Prosser was slightly taken aback.
“What do you mean, why’s it got to be built?” he said. “It’s a bypass. You’ve got to build bypasses.”
Bypasses allow some people to dash from Point A to Point B very fast while other people dash from Point B to Point A very fast. They would also be totally unnecessary if everyone would just work out, once and for all, where they want to be.
Bypasses & Analytics
Analytics are not bypasses, partially because they serve different purposes but mostly because one is a practical application of data and the other is a physical motorway on which vehicles move, usually slower than they’d like.
Well, the vehicles rarely care, but the drivers can get quite irate.
I mean, there are some similarities, in that bypasses were designed as a means of avoiding traffic congestion in order to reach a destination while analytics are intended to provide clear access to insights through the noise…
I’m getting off track. But so is everyone else.
Twists and Turns
Analytics has long been an underappreciated discipline, which is odd when you consider the entire point of collecting data is using it to make sense of what we’re doing, how well it’s working, and where we could do better.
So, what’s my point again? I’m getting a little caught up in the twists and turns of relating data & analytics to fictional road construction projects in a five-book trilogy.
If only I could consolidate my writing into a single point that took you right from the introduction to conclusion without distractions along the way.
Gotcha.
Bypassing the Noise
Mr Prosser in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is certainly not presented as a hero. He is the initial symbol of overwrought process and careless bureaucracy that exists for its own sake. We’ll get to him later.
In Data Analytics & Business Intelligence, the bypass can be a good analogy for presentation styles. Your end users are not where you are in terms of understanding because they haven’t done the analytics work.
There is an incredible amount of data, process, history, and just noise between where they’re starting and where you need to be.
Build a bypass. A simple, direct path to understanding. Give them a dashboard (or report) that shows what they need to see. You can always revisit the details with them later.
Beware of the Leopard
I’ll defend my bypass analogy. I will not defend Mr L Prosser.
If you need to take down old reports or data sets in order to create your new processes, always give fair warning and enable feedback. Make sure people know and can respond in time to make a difference.
Do not place your plans in the equivalent of the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.’
Definitely don’t display them in actual disused lavatory, and where would you even get a leopard? Be realistic.
Anyway…
Even the best data architecture has its complexities. Even the best data has noise. From source to replication to data lake to ETL/ELT to warehouse to analytics & data science.
Most stakeholders do not want or need to see all of it. They just need to know the data is reliable and their insights both relevant and understandable.
Sometimes, you’ve got to build bypasses.
For more of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to Analytics, check out…
