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Ask HN: How to find business problems to solve as a data scientist?
To provide some context: Our entire data scientist team is about to join our parent company. In anticipation, how can we determine a business problem to solve given that 1) we don't want to do the dirty work for other data science teams or steal their work, and 2) there is no clear mandates being passed down to us from the higher up.
Obvious processes to go through include talking to all the data science team and learn more about their work and future pipeline, speaking with the business folks if possible to understand their needs. But is there something else that we can do that hasn't been listed yet?
- ilikeatari 7y ago#2 is somewhat problematic. I would suggest finding someone in your organization that truly knows the business you are in and it’s day to day challenges. Identifying this person or people might be hard but it is crucial. Establishing true and open relationship with this person or group is the next step. It has to be genuine. Once that’s established you will see the stream of real pain points and it will be your job to map them into data science opportunities. An alternative option is to shadow day to day ops crew and distill requirements that way.
- probinso 7y agoThis is kind of significantly dependent on the type of work you're doing. When in doubt, nearly every company has bottlenecks we're either a human or a series of humans have to perform parts of a single task. Usually a data science team can find ways to reduce the number of hands in cookie jar. If the data science team has any natural language processing expertise, then usually there is some work in organizing text documents of some sort. Data scientists are kind of a general title oh, so you're going to want to know what specializations they might be coming in with. Many data scientists got their starts in business intelligence. Those data scientists will probably have strong opinions on how they can inform the business.
- espeed 7y agoWatch the news and solve problems they can't seem to solve.
- iamnothere123 7y agoLOL, you know you are doing a BS job when you have to look for a problem to solve
- dang 7y agoPlease don't cross into personal attack on HN.
- iamnothere123 7y agoIts not a personal attack, Its just true
- dang 7y agoTrue things can be personal attacks.
- iamnothere123 7y agoDescribing the state of something is not an attack
- dang 7y agoYou can't reduce communication to simple rules like that. It depends on who is communicating what to whom and why. For example, when a middle school kid has acne and another kid goes on about their face, that is not a neutral "describing the state of something". Everything they say may be perfectly true, yet it is certainly a personal attack—and the more cruel, the more true it is.
- iamnothere123 7y agoSeriously are you taking child behavior as an example? "Argument by analogy" look it up
- ThomPete 7y agoThis might inspire you: The problem with problems https://link.medium.com/qDH4gV224Z https://link.medium.com/qDH4gV224Z
- JSeymourATL 7y ago> there is no clear mandates being passed down to us from the higher up. SEEK Clarity - Get 1:1 time with the Higher Up. Probe for his Top Priorities. What does he really want to accomplish? What does success look like? Dan Sullivan offers a terrific technique for this, the R Factor Question. > https://resources.strategiccoach.com/the-multiplier-mindset-blog/if-you-want-people-to-trust-you-ask-them-this-question https://resources.strategiccoach.com/the-multiplier-mindset-...
- natalyarostova 7y agoTry to see the world through the eyes of the product managers/finance/ops guys (pick whichever makes the most sense, or all of them). Then pour through their excel workbooks to look for something that they are currently approximating, but which would benefit from a rigorous approach.