6 steps of data analysis process are ask, prepare, process, analyze, share, and act. Asking is a collaborative effort that focuses on what the project will look like and what result they’d be looking for. Prepare is where analysts identify what data are needed to achieve the successful result. Process is how analysts will collect, store, manage, and protect the data. Analysis is a discovery phase that is conducted using the data and sharing is a phase where the findings are presented/delivered. Act is a phase where analysts will work with leadership to implement changes that are based on the findings.
While it sounds simple, there are lot of work that goes into each steps, for example, processing data involves cleaning data to make sure it’s complete, factual, relevant, and free of outliers. It also has to cover data lifecycle to include how long will data be stored, how will it be stored, and how will it be disposed.
There are other data analysis lifecycle as well, for example, EMC corporations data analytics life cycle is discovery, pre processing data, model planning, model building, communicate results, and operationalize while SAS’s lifecycle is ask, prepare, explore, model, implement, act, and evaluate. While steps might be slightly different, the end goal is to collect data to answer a problem using data. While there are different ways to do things, core idea is the same.
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