How it works: the work of the team of analysts on the example of the development of a single digital service

Who are all these people?

The analyst profession is one of the most sought after in the world. According to the director of the recruitment agency Pruffi, Alena Vladimirskaya, business analysts and all those involved in the optimization and implementation of new business processes are very much in demand and highly paid.

Modern analysts are unique people who combine a variety of qualities: from technical to managerial. But the most important condition for entering this profession is the ability for analytical thinking, which allows you to make effective decisions based on the information collected, complemented by advanced communication skills to obtain this very information. Sometimes these functions are performed not by one, but by several people working together.
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Oleg Sakhno, the head of research at Rookee , spoke about how this looks in practice and how different analytical tasks can be even within one service.


Why IT project analyst?

The simple answer is: to remain relevant and relevant, and perhaps to lead in a highly competitive environment, you need to understand your audience and its needs.

Understand what is happening with your service at every stage of its development and respond to market changes in a timely manner.



What analysts are doing in the Rookee service:

• Examine user behavior.

• Explore presence markets and new markets.

• Analyze the channels to attract new audiences.

• Organize the creation of new tools and control existing ones.

• Evaluate the financial benefits of new tools.

• Organize the modernization of existing tools.

• Participate in the creation of user stories, usability testing.

• Segment the audience (divide the audience into groups, where they are combined according to similar needs).

• Build models of user behavior in the service.

How it works

In the Rookee service, product development is based on the Lean concept (lean manufacturing, from lean manufacturing, lean manufacturing), which implies the involvement of every employee in the business optimization process and maximum consumer orientation. According to the concept of lean manufacturing, the assessment of the value of the product for the end user takes place at each stage of its creation. Hereinafter, by value we understand the usefulness inherent in the product from the client’s point of view.

Following this system, several different analysts can participate in the development of our product.



Business analyst

The business analyst, in our case, is also a product owner of the product team (an autonomous cross-functional team that can independently solve tasks and achieve the goals set for the project).

The business change process begins with business intelligence. It is he who determines the direction of development, identifies current needs of the audience, decides how to close them in terms of business value, formulates and tests hypotheses. For example, he decides that it is more relevant for users of the service at a given time, to expand the supplier base or to increase the number of parameters for promotion in search engines.

Main tasks:

• monitoring and analysis of operating and product statistics;

• participation in the preparation of strategic decisions regarding products and pricing;

• creation of a predictive (forecast) demand model;

• setting goals for the development of new reports and monitoring systems.

UX analyst

In the process of working on the study of the user audience, their behavioral reactions, motives, goals and needs, designing user interaction, etc., UX-analytics are connected to the product team.

Main tasks:

• carry out a deep behavioral and scenario analysis of customers;

• create Customer Journey Maps (customer’s way maps) and User Journey Maps (user’s way maps);

• work out experiments with product managers, designers, and UX specialists;

• process the results: visualize the data, draw conclusions based on them;

• improve metrics, look for ways to process data to extract behavioral data that is important for understanding.

UX analyst example

Task: Design an optimal solution for expanding the user's conversion funnel prior to payment from mobile devices.

What the UX analyst does: Analyzes user interaction with the service interface from mobile devices, compiles Customer Journey Maps and User Journey Maps users, develops growth hypotheses, designs solutions to optimize the user's way to payment, and analyzes the effectiveness of the solution.

Systems Analyst

After determining the business requirements, the task moves to the level of system analysts. Together with UX-analysts, they decide with the help of what functionality this or that user need will be closed.

In particular, the system analyst determines the data processing algorithm, and the UX-specialist determines the value supply chain (determines how the data on the page will be structured and how they are related to each other from the user's point of view).

An example of a system analyst

Task: Implement a new semantic core in the SEO-master (a tool that helps the user to customize the advertising campaign in the service), the target indicator is the growth of the average bill, the increase in conversion to the created projects.

What the system analyst does: analyzes user interaction with the selection of semantic kernels, analyzes user needs, develops a plan for implementation and growth hypotheses, designs and launches the A / B test, evaluates the result, collects feedback, performs the second A / B test iteration, again collects feedback, launches a new test, and so on until the goal is reached.

RnD analyst

If the task requires machine learning, building a complex mathematical model, analyzing a large amount of data, the RnD direction, namely, technology analysts, is involved. Their task is to develop an algorithm (create a prototype) of creating a sample of value. It will not be a solution that is immediately integrated into the working system, but it is a technology that is guaranteed to give value to the client (will be significant for him).

Example of RnD analytics:

Task: Implement an optimal rate optimization mechanism when running an advertising campaign in Yandex.Direct (we need “more traffic” and “more leads” strategies), taking into account the features of setting Yandex.Direct and the features of the Yandex.Direct API and its limitations.

What does RnD analyst do: it creates an algorithm for optimizing rates, taking into account the above features, testing the algorithm, proving the value of optimization (increasing the number of leads or traffic by 20% or more), passes the algorithm into operation.

Channel Analyst

In his work, RnD analyst attracts specialized analysts of advertising channels . These are carriers of high-level advertising expertise that can develop value-creating methods. In particular, this is the expertise of working with Yandex.Direct. The task of analytics of advertising channels is to describe the optimal process of placing rates, and the task of RnD analytics is to automate this process.

Following this stage, the task of a system analyst and a UX-specialist, based on a ready-made prototype, formulate requirements for developers in such a way that everything conceived is integrated into the product.

Example of analytics of advertising channels:

Continuing the history of working with Yandex.Direct, the advertising channel analyst tests and forms the optimal rate setting process: regularity, what the rate should depend on, maximum and minimum rates, what factors should influence rate placing, how to take other factors into account.


Product Analyst

No matter how paradoxical it may sound, the product analyst in the Rookee service is not part of the product team. It works directly with the Product Manager.

The main tasks of the product analyst:

• Forms a single information field and provides analytical support for product teams.

• Collects information about audience segments that may be affected by product changes.

• Monitors the tree of grocery metrics (quantitative and qualitative indicators of the work and product usage).

Thus, product teams focus on product development, without wasting time collecting analytics and building initial hypotheses. A Product Manager receives analytical support for operations.

Example of a product analyst:

Objective: To evaluate the results of the A / B test of introducing a new semantic core in accordance with the target metrics of the new tool and assess the indirect impact of the new tool on other product metrics

What the product analyst does: collects the requirements for the format of the implementation report with the product manager and product owner, prepares the report, and analyzes the correlation between the implementation of the new tool and the changes to its associated product metrics.

Financial analyst

It employs very smart guys who evaluate the profitability of projects, are responsible for their financial and economic analysis, are engaged in making financial forecasts - and much more. The work of financial analyst is a separate big story, which we will definitely tell, but next time.


Summarizing

Be prepared for the fact that analytics is almost always difficult, long and expensive. Good analysts are hard to find, easy to lose and impossible to forget. But there is no way out for those who develop original IT products - it is impossible to do without high-quality analytics, going to the developer’s intuition, as it was several years ago.

It is said that more than two centuries ago, one of the Rothschilds said: "Who owns the information, he owns the world." With analytics a similar situation. Trite, but true: analytics today is the main engine of progress and the key to the success of any IT project.

The article used materials: www.rbc.ru