Agile Analytics in an Hour

Have you ever wondered what Agile Analytics and Big Data is all about? I did this summer.

So I took the chance to interview Ken Collier about Agile Analytics during our North American Away Day. Ken is Director of Agile Analytics at Thoughtworks, has written a book on the topic and is a frequent speaker. The perfect person to help me fill the gap.

The audio interview can be found here: http://www.se-radio.net/2014/07/episode-206-ken-collier-on-agile-analytics

He told me about Amazon: “They can predict what you will order based on browsing behavior and past purchases, and can ship the item to a distribution center close to you in anticipation of your order. This significantly reduces shipping costs and improves delivery times.”

So they will make sure the items get shipped closer to my home. But how do they know?

By looking at data of course. Ken told me they might be using a technique called collaborative filtering.

In the end we also talk about the future of data science: “Your car is loaded with data. Your mobile device is loaded with data. If you have a personal health tracking wearable device, those things create data. Everything produces data. The questions are: What does this look like? How can we create the most value from this explosion of data?”

We closed the interview by talking about the ethics of dealing with peoples’ data.

The interview was recorded for Software Engineering Radio, a podcast for professional software developers. More episodes by me and other show hosts can be found under http://www.se-radio.net.