Data science dysfunctions

How analytics maturity models are stunting data science teams

The model that cripples other models

Photo by Suzanne D. Williams on Unsplash

If I were to pick out the single most common slide presented at analytics and data science conferences, it would be Gartner’s analytics ascendancy model. It describes four types of analytics, in increasing order of both difficulty and value:

• Descriptive Analytics: What happened?
• Diagnostic Analytics: Why did it happen?
• Predictive Analytics: What will happen?
• Prescriptive Analytics: How can we make it happen?

Not to be confused with the capability maturity model from Carnegie Mellon, the diagram has been variously called a maturity model, a continuum, and yes, even an escalator. Sometimes companies flip the order too.

Moving past semantics, I will call this the analytics maturity model for the purpose of this article based on common industry parlance.

The Analytics Maturity Model Is A Compelling Idea…

This model captivates our imagination for three reasons:

1. Its format closely mirrors the classic 5W 1H journalist technique that immediately sets our…