Do You Want To Understand and Enable Citizen Data Scientists? You SHOULD!

I had a conversation with a dear friend the other day and one of the things we discussed was the ubiquitous mention of Citizen Data Scientists in technology and industry publications and conferences. My friend (who shall remain nameless), insisted that this was just another passing fancy and that Citizen Data Scientists were not really all that important in building the enterprise of the future.

Let me share with you, two Gartner Strategic Planning Assumptions (SPA) I mentioned to my friend:

• By 2020, more than 40% of data science tasks will be automated, resulting in increased productivity and broader usage by citizen data scientists.
• By 2023, data literacy will become an explicit and necessary driver of business value, demonstrated by its formal inclusion in over 80% of data and analytics strategies and change management programs.

You might notice that the first SPA refers to 2020…and, correct me if I am wrong, but 2020 is right now, isn’t it? So, unless you want to be behind the curve (like my friend), you should probably get started with this whole Citizen Data Scientist thing!

But, where to start? First, you need a comprehensive understanding of the role of a Citizen Data Scientist and how that will benefit the enterprise and increase productivity for business analysts, IT staff and data scientists. When you transform business users into Citizen Data Scientists and encourage data literacy among your team members, you allow them to access Augmented Analytics solutions that will give them guidance and recommendations on how to view and visualize data and which algorithms and analytical techniques to use and then provide sophisticated, easy-to-use tools to get the job done. When Citizen Data Scientists have the tools and knowledge to use analytics on a daily basis, they can incorporate metrics and fact-based decision making into their role and share data and analytics in staff meetings and with other users and the quality and timeliness of your actions and decisions will improve.

It’s true!

To help you get started on the Citizen Data Scientist journey, I am providing a reference to Resources, In-Person and Online Workshops for training and Use Cases to show you how augmented analytics can be used by Citizen Data Scientists to improve your enterprise performance and build knowledge across the organization.