Data Core · Performance Analysis · Module
The question
What decision the analysis is meant to inform, and what answer would change it.
The idea
How it works
Analysis begun from available data produces interesting patterns; analysis begun from a decision produces answers. The second is harder to start and considerably more useful.
The sharpest scoping question is what answer would change the decision. Where no answer would, the analysis is not worth running whatever it might find.
Working with it
In practice
- 01
Name the decision first
What will be done differently depending on the answer. If nothing, stop here.
- 02
State what would change it
A threshold or a direction. This also tells you how precise the analysis needs to be.
- 03
Label exploration as exploration
Looking around is legitimate. Presenting it as decision support is not.
- 04
Set the precision required
Many decisions need only a direction. Precision beyond that is expense with no return.
One level in
The components of the question
A component is something that exists afterwards which did not exist before — a deliverable or a mechanism, not an intention.
Ask what answer would change the decision. Where none would, the analysis is not worth running.
The other modules in performance analysis
Method
How the question will be answered, and whether that method can actually answer it — because most business questions are causal and most available methods are not.
LearnReading the result
What the finding does and does not say, including the alternative explanations — the step where confidence is either calibrated or inflated.
LearnActing on it
What changed as a result, and whether the change worked — without which the analysis was a document rather than an input.
Learn