What not to do when you are asked to solve a problem - Part 1

You are assigned a task that you need to complete in the next couple of days. You know that time is not the luxury that you have. You start off answering the question by pulling out the data required; calculate the metrics; design a visualization to enhance the report; mention some of the insights you found from the analysis and share with your lead. Now the lead comes back with a few inputs/ suggestion which you go back and work on. Finally, after a day and a half's work, you share the results to your boss who lashes at you and your lead saying you haven't answered what our client wants and rather you are just giving some information. You have a few more hours left and you don’t even know what was wrong. Do you start again from scratch? Do you change how you approached the problem at hand. You pull your hair in despair. How many times have you faced a similar situation? Have you learnt from it. This post is for the 'humans of the Analytics World' who has committed the heinous crime of overlooking the objective of a problem. The elite rest may choose to skip this post.

To be continued in Part 2