Data Science Playbook

Despite the explosion of big data in recent years, less than 0.5% of data is being used to help guide decision making. The time is now—organizations must transform themselves through data science.

Data science is the art of turning data into insights to inform decisions. When used effectively, it can bring higher productivity, greater returns, and overall improved performance to organizations. Many organizations have been collecting data for a long time, which means they're now well-positioned to use data science to drive mission and business success. A focus on data science helps organizations understand past events, predict future trends, and prescribe optimal courses of action. Ultimately this will lead to improved operations, differentiated customer value propositions, and competitive advantage.

After working with a large number of public and private sector organizations, Booz Allen learned that data science depends on six critical elements, including: analytic opportunities, data, analytic techniques, people, technology, and culture, which we're calling "ADAPT+C".

Analytic Opportunities
Considers new and existing use cases to apply data science to improve organization mission and operations.

Data
Considers opportunities to use new and existing data sets and better manage and govern data in support of data science projects.

Analytic Techniques
Considers the analytic tradecraft and techniques to be applied to generate insights from data.

People
Considers the set of human capital programs required to develop a talented and capable team of data science practitioners.

Technology
Considers the optimal ways to use existing and new technologies including applications, data platforms, and infrastructure to perform data science projects.

Culture
Considers the set of mechanisms that communicate, share, and reinforce the value of data science across an organization to change the behavior of employees.