Six steps of the Data Analysis process
Every Data Analyst should know these 6 steps to succeed in their career
Data analysis
Data analysis is the collection, transformation, and organization of data in order to arrive at conclusions, make predictions, and guide business decisions by using facts, metrics, and data.
To know more about Data, Data analysis, and Data Analytics — — — — — — Data Science 101 -Getting started with Data Science.
To analyze data we can’t start our analysis directly. Because For every analysis, there is a sequence of the process to be followed to arrive at a strategic conclusion. This process should be followed completely. If any of the processes are missed, they may give misleading results (inaccurate results) which will affect our business decisions. Here we will see the 6 Data Analysis process.
- Ask
- Prepare
- Process
- Analyze
- Share
- Act
Let us have a detailed view of these processes
1. Ask
For every successful project, there is a requirement gathering phase. In that requirement gathering phase, the team will gather information to understand and identify the technical requirements of the project. Likewise, In data analysis, we also possess a phase called the “Ask” process. In this phase of the process, the data analyst asks specific questions to the concerned client, related to the project. They will ask questions to define the problem and to know the required results in accordance with the problem. They will make a plan based on these requirements. For eg., They will ask questions and understand the problem statement and decide what data is needed for this problem.
2. Prepare
The next process is Prepare. From the previous process ‘Ask’, they would decide which data is needed, what specific information would be gathered. They will also decide where to collect those data. Data Gathering is a huge process. Sometimes the data will be available handy online. But sometimes it would be difficult based on the requirements. At those times, they have to retrieve the data from databases. Eg., Data analysts use SQL queries frequently to retrieve and collect data for the company’s database. In this ‘Prepare’ process, they also decide about who would have access to the data collected and who is assigned to this data analysis.
3. Process
In this process, Data Analysts store and manage the Data in a protected place. They will make sure that the collected data is protected with strong security. In order to maintain confidentiality and protection, access to the collected data is given to specific employees. So that the leakage of data outside the organization is avoided.
In this process phase, data cleaning is also carried out. Data cleaning is the process of detecting and correcting inaccurate records from the database. Sometimes unwanted and irrelevant data is deleted from the record. This process is called data cleaning.
4. Analyze
From the data collected, the Data Analyst would analyze and discover some important results. In this ‘Analyse’ process, analysts use some technical tools to find the relationship between the data and visualize them to analyze the data easily. Generally, they explore, visualize and analyze the data. They use numerous libraries for the analysis. They also use statistical concepts in this process. The analyzed results are made into reports periodically.
5. Share
Reports generated from the previous step are shared between the team members for further analysis. Sometimes, they would share these reports with the subject matter experts and stakeholders, to get more suggestions. Their suggestions are also considered and work into that processing. After sharing the required resources, data is archived or destroyed to improve data protection. Now, the final reports/decisions are made after certain cycles of analysis.
6. Act
The final and important process is “Act”. From the reports obtained from the analysis, the team comes to a conclusion/decision. Here the analyst team works with the client to implement these decisions into actions. This is the last stage where the problem is solved which was discussed in the ‘Ask’ phase. They will make sure that they have arrived at a correct solution and convert them into a model or business action.
The ability to bring data-driven insights into decision-making is extremely powerful
These are the 6 stages of the Data Analysis process. Every Data Analyst plans according to this process. We‘ve seen all these processes briefly.
The real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.
-Henry ford
Would love to know if I had anything missed or said mistakenly.
Cheers and Thanks, mates!
