Building Excel Teams

[FelipeVaz]

Hi,




Im facing new challenges in my office, like restructurations from all sides. There's an oportunity to get a specific Data Analysis Team and set new ways to play with data. That Team regularly uses Excel to deliver Statistical studies for all the organization. I'd like to know if there is a Team Development Model to apply in this situation, to plan, organize, measure this kind of Data Analysis Team. We have a statistician, economist, business managers and enginners.

For example,
The product specialist and a business manager could get the job and understand the demands;
Then, Data Analyst extract the data;
Then, Statistician transform data, create measures;
Then, Data analyst finalizes the job, designing, modeling and so on.

This is really simple, but not methodological. So, thats the idea! Im trying to find a method to build a data analysis team.

 

[Logit]

.
https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/developing-your-team.htm

https://www.projectmanager.com/excel-project-management

Not certain the above resources are what you are seeking ? The search term used on Google was "Team Development Model"


The following sounds like you've already put it together ? At least in your mind ? Or are you speaking of something completely different from the above ?

The product specialist and a business manager could get the job and understand the demands;
Then, Data Analyst extract the data;
Then, Statistician transform data, create measures;
Then, Data analyst finalizes the job, designing, modeling and so on

 

[FelipeVaz]

.
https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/developing-your-team.htm

https://www.projectmanager.com/excel-project-management

Not certain the above resources are what you are seeking ? The search term used on Google was "Team Development Model"


The following sounds like you've already put it together ? At least in your mind ? Or are you speaking of something completely different from the above ?

hi Logit

Thanks for your suggestion. The topics that Im looking for refers to team roles, position tasks related to data and its priorities.

 

[Johnny C]

Successful teams I've worked in have been split someway along the lines you're thinking of.

A team of data analysts to extract the data from it's sources

A couple of Excel modellers (with VBA skills) to take that data and put models around it

A few commercial analysts with statistical skills to determine the business requirements and specify how the models need to output the data, and review/present the findings.

If it's a new team, depending on how big your organisation is and what sort of money they are prepared to spend, Excel as a data analysis tool is a good way to develop a prototype, but start thinking about other tools such as R or SAS and SQL-Server that team members might need to be proficient at. Excel isn't good for handling large amounts of data and it's easy for errors to seep in or models become too large to use. Usually if the data analysis team gets some good results, the requirements will excalate exponentially and Excel will become unfeasible. I mention R because if your organisation doesn't want to spend model on SAS, R is free and whilst it doesn't look as pretty it does similar things.

 

[FelipeVaz]

Successful teams I've worked in have been split someway along the lines you're thinking of.

A team of data analysts to extract the data from it's sources

A couple of Excel modellers (with VBA skills) to take that data and put models around it

A few commercial analysts with statistical skills to determine the business requirements and specify how the models need to output the data, and review/present the findings.

If it's a new team, depending on how big your organisation is and what sort of money they are prepared to spend, Excel as a data analysis tool is a good way to develop a prototype, but start thinking about other tools such as R or SAS and SQL-Server that team members might need to be proficient at. Excel isn't good for handling large amounts of data and it's easy for errors to seep in or models become too large to use. Usually if the data analysis team gets some good results, the requirements will excalate exponentially and Excel will become unfeasible. I mention R because if your organisation doesn't want to spend model on SAS, R is free and whilst it doesn't look as pretty it does similar things.

Johnny, thank you for suggestions.

We have a guy who works with R. And yes, we do a lot off prototypes. But this cenario are changing and we need to use this intelligence to build organizational value to the customer. So, Im trying to find a process, a scope, which the data flow inside the team. Maybe a double-check process or a method to evaluate every process before delivering. Thats the method that Im trying to find...

 

[Johnny C]

it can sound costly but perhaps a dual build approach, where a model is developed by a technical person and a commercial analyst. it sounds costly because you have 2 people working on one thing but it greatly reduces the errors and makes sure that the model does what is required first time. it has the benefit of sharing skills so the technical person gains commercial awareness and the commercial person gains technical skills, so over time the process becomes quicker. The key to this working is matching the personalities of the two so you know they work together effectively.