Before we move along, we would like to give you an overview of what you may learn in the Mip Go program. We say "may" because each person gets a unique experience from this program, which depends on their previous experiences and the projects they choose, for instance.
Solving real-world analytics problems requires a combination of skills (plus a ton of practice). It's not about analytics only! That's precisely where most of the academic and online programs out there fall short.
Driving a car in the parking lot is not the same as driving in the city.
To see the big picture and create a simple mental model, we decompose the process of solving real-world analytics problems into four buckets of activities. We call it the D-Wise framework.
As you might imagine, a lot of skills are required to perform the activities under each of these buckets. A complete list of such skills would be completely overwhelming! But no one can claim they have acquired all such skills. It's a process, a journey, that is unique to each and every professional.
"The only true security in life comes from knowing that every single day
you are improving yourself in some way."
Tony Robbins
If you are arriving here with good business experience, you probably already have many skills under Discover (understanding business context, tracking KPI, etc.) and perhaps some under Deploy (testing, solution validation, etc.).
If you come with a data science background, you may know how to manipulate data, write code, and build visualization, which puts you primarily under Develop nd Deploy.
If you hold an MS or a Ph.D. in computer science, then you are certainly comfortable with algorithms, which makes Develop your main home.
If you are an operation researcher or a mathematician, your skills are mostly under Define and Develop because you have learned how to define problems precisely and explore ways to solve them efficiently.
If we could always put together a team that includes all the four personas listed above, assuming that they would be able to communicate well, we would be in a position to solving literally any real-world analytics problem.
These, however, are strong assumptions. Many companies have tried and failed with this approach. The reasons include the fact that an interdisciplinary team like this makes the project quite expensive and maintaining effective communication quickly become a big challenge.
The alternative is to empower people by giving them the opportunity to advance their skill-set--this is what Mip Go is here for.
While advancing their skills across other D-buckets can be very challenging for the business persona, it may not be so hard for the other personas because they may already have enough background under the Develop category, where the most hardcore skills fall into.
Historically, some activities under Deploy have also required high technical expertise mostly common to computer scientists. However, the recent technology advancements have made solution development and deployment much easier, similar to what has happened with website building after platforms such as Google Sites, Squarespace, and Wix became popular.
Whatever argument we use will not be enough to wipe away the concerns that might be going on in your mind right now. And to be honest, the journey we are inviting you to undertake is not a trivial one.
In the end, you will have to trust us knowing that we will leverage our experience and expertise to make this process as smooth as possible for you. We at Mip Wise have gone through this process and can promise you that the outcomes of this journey are extremely rewarding.
In addition, we strongly encourage you to read the following article that
reminds us about how empowering (or limiting) a belief or a mental model
can be. Then you can review your beliefs and make sure that they are well
aligned with your short and long-term goals.
What Breaking the 4-Minute Mile Taught Us About the Limits of Conventional Thinking
(4 minutes)
The good news is that to make Mip Go a rewarding process throughout, we align our training methodology with our favorite development methodology: the Agile Methodology.
The main idea behind the Agile Methodology is to solve problems by sprints, starting from a minimum viable product (MVP), and to frequently deliver partial results to the project stakeholders. This is opposed to trying to solve the whole problem and delivering the entire solution in one go (you will learn more about Agile later in this program).
In the context of training, Agile means continuous self-development. In particular, you will start applying D-Wise to solve problems very soon, just that you will start with simple versions of the problems, your MVP, and let them evolve over time.
We hope that this discussion brings as much excitement for you as it does for us!
To help you to get ready for what is on your way, here is a list of fundamental skills that you will need to develop (if you haven't yet) in order to start solving end-to-end analytics problems soon and keep building the momentum:
- Documentation: Solving real-world problems involves documentation across all buckets of the D-Wise Framework. We will focus on one particular tool which is Markdown. This is a text-to-HTML conversion tool that strikes a good balance between simplicity and expressiveness and is easy to use. This content you are reading, for instance, was created with Markdown syntax only.
- IDE: An Integrated Development Environment is where you will be
writing code. Spyder, Visual Studio, and Pycharm are all examples of well-known IDEs. We are big fans of Pycharm and that's the IDE we recommend and will help you to get familiar with. - Python: This is our programing language of choice (no need to explain why), and we expect you to be familiarized with its syntax.
- Versioning & Collaboration: Real-world analytics problems are solved through multiple iterations (which leads to multiple versions of the solution) and most of the time in collaboration with other people. To achieve this in an organized and professional way, we will be using GitHub, which is probably where you are reading this material right now.
The list above is common to everyone taking the Mip Go program. Beyond that, the journey becomes uniquely yours.
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