Data Analysis Roadmap
Before we dive into how an analyst transforms data, let’s briefly breakdown the roadmap of the entire process. Data analysis is the collection, transformation, and organization of data in order to draw conclusions, make predictions, and drive informed decision-making. Here are the steps needed
Ask
Guiding questions
- What topic are you exploring?
- What is the problem you are trying to solve?
- What metrics will you use to measure your data to achieve your objective? Who are the stakeholders?
- Who is your audience for this analysis and how does this affect your analysis process and presentation?
- How will this data help your stakeholders make decisions?
Key tasks
It’s important to understand the problem and any questions about your case study early on so that you’re focused on your stakeholders’ needs.
- Choose a case study
- Identify the problem
- Determine key stakeholders
- Explore the data and establish metrics
Prepare
Guiding questions
- Where is your data located?
- How is the data organized?
- Are there issues with bias or credibility in this data? Does your data ROCCC?
- How are you addressing licensing, privacy, security, and accessibility?
- How did you verify the data’s integrity?
- How does it help you answer your question?
- Are there any problems with the data?
Key tasks
The prepare phase ensures that you have all of the data you need for your analysis and that you have credible, useful data.
- Collect data and store it appropriately
- Identify how it’s organized
- Sort and filter the data
- Determine the credibility of the data
Process
Guiding questions
- What tools are you choosing and why?
- Have you ensured your data’s integrity?
- What steps have you taken to ensure that your data is clean?
- How can you verify that your data is clean and ready to analyze?
- Have you documented your cleaning process so you can review and share those results?
Key tasks
Now that you know your data is credible and relevant to your problem, you’ll need to clean it so that your analysis will be error-free.
- Check the data for errors
- Transform the data into the right type
- Document the cleaning process
- Choose your tools
Analyze
Guiding questions
- How should you organize your data to perform analysis on it?
- Has your data been properly formatted?
- What surprises did you discover in the data?
- What trends or relationships have you found in the data?
- How do these insights answer your question or solve the problem?
Key tasks
Now you’ll really put your data to work to uncover new insights and discover potential solutions to your problem!
- Aggregate your data so it’s useful and accessible
- Organize and format your data
- Perform calculations
- Identify trends and relationships
Act
Guiding questions
- What is your final conclusion based on your analysis?
- How can you apply your insights?
- Are there any next steps you or your stakeholders can take based on your findings?
- Is there additional data you could use to expand on your findings?
- How can you feature your case study in your portfolio?
Key tasks
After this, your case study will be complete. But you can use these steps again to help guide you through your analysis process.
- Share next steps with your stakeholders
- Determine if more data could give you new insights