There’s a growing legion of companies and product teams that aspire to call themselves “data driven.” When they make decisions, they tell tales of how Google tested 40 shades of blue and eliminated the need for intuition and gut-based decision making.
But, as data might suggest, extreme beliefs in any approach are problematic and a belief in data driven decisions is no exception.
For the data to point the way, we need suitable problems, the right inputs and tracking based on good questions and thoughtful hypotheses, reliable data pipelines, good analytical judgment in overlooking outliers and picking a robust methodology, and versatility in the tools to analyze and interpret the outputs. Every once a while, all of these align and it all just works.
But, for the most part, we’re better off marrying a desire for data with a healthy skepticism for what it is telling us. It is that skepticism that will ensure we keep pushing for the right questions and iterate our way into insights that get us closer to the truth.
Better to be data informed than data driven.
A Learning a Day 