2 Building an Analytics Team

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

—George Santayana

Creating a highly functional and successful advanced analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) team is a unique and nuanced endeavor. On the face of it, the process of building an analytics team may not seem to be different from building any other functional or technical team, but this is where problems typically start.

In this chapter, we will discuss the organizational context in which you and your new team will be operating, and, as part of the discussion, we will outline the characteristics of the communication and collaboration interface between the analytics team and the functional/operational teams. Also, we will examine hiring in non-traditional populations that you should consider when building a high-performance analytics team.

We will examine the possibility that young professionals can play a unique and valuable role in taking calculated risks and accelerating your innovation agenda. And, finally, we will conclude the chapter with a discussion examining the possible operating models for your analytics team, the implications of each model, and how to evolve the team over time given organizational objectives, budget considerations, and other relevant constraints.