Organizational Design of Big Data and Analytics Teams

Abstract

Although many would argue that the most important factor for the success of a big data project is the process of analyzing the data, it is more important to staff, structure and organize the participants involved to ensure an efficient collaboration within the team and an effective use of the toolsets, the relevant applications and a customized flow of information. A main challenge of big data projects originates from the amount of people involved and that need to collaborate, the need for a higher and specific education, the defined approach to solve the analytical problem that is undefined in many cases, the data-set itself (structured or unstructured) and the required hard- and software (such as analysis-software or self-learning algorithms). Today there is neither an organizational framework nor overarching guidelines for the creation of a high-performance analytics team and its organizational integration available. This paper builds upon (a) the organizational design of a team for a big data project, (b) the relevant roles and competencies (such as programming or communication skills) of the members of the team and (c) the form in which they are connected and managed.