Agile for data science teams

Agile methodologies have been widely successful for software engineering teams but seem inappropriate for data science teams, because data science is part engineering, part research. Jennifer Prendki demonstrates how, with a minimum amount of tweaking, data science managers can adapt Agile techniques and establish best practices to make their teams more efficient.

Since the publication of the Manifesto for Agile Software Development in 2001, Agile methodologies have been adopted by a majority of tech companies and have unquestionably revolutionized the tech industry and its culture. Agile’s huge success is hardly a surprise: Agile development came as a breath of fresh air at a time when the tech industry was crippled by the many inefficiencies caused by its own success. Back then, the Agile mindset was a panacea for tech’s growing pains. However, the tech industry is now facing a new revolution: big data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. The methodologies that were so beneficial to the field of software development seem inappropriate for data science teams, because data science is part engineering, part research. Jennifer Prendki demonstrates how, with a minimum amount of tweaking, data science managers can adapt Agile techniques and establish best practices to make their teams more efficient. Jennifer starts by discussing the Agile Manifesto in detail and reviewing the reasons for its major success in software engineering. She then outlines the different ways that organizations set up their data science initiatives and explains in which ways these teams differ or are similar to software engineering teams. Jennifer concludes by detailing how to adapt traditional Agile methodologies to create a powerful framework for data science managers and shares tips on how to allocate resources, improve best practices, and tweak the usage of planning and organization tools for the benefit of data teams.