A Proposed Process for Performing Data Mining Projects

Abstract

There is an enormous amount of data generated by academic, business, and governmental organizations alike; however, only a small portion of the data that is collected and stored in databases is ever analyzed. Since data are the building blocks for both information and knowledge, the opportunity costs (to organizations) of ignoring data assets can range from competitive disadvantage to organizational demise. Data mining has thus emerged as a discipline focusing on unleashing the potential of data in organizations. The enthusiasm surrounding data mining at large continues to grow; however, at the same time, there are claims that data mining projects fail in delivering the expected value. Many of the causes of the failures can be traced back to strategy, process and technology variables. The purpose of this chapter is to discover a process for performing data mining projects and to propose this process to practitioners as a starting point when making decisions about planning, organizing, executing and closing data mining projects. Literature on package implementation, rapid application development and new product development together with results from a case study are used to arrive at the proposed data mining process. More research is needed to evaluate, refine and validate the proposed process before it can be used as the basis for developing a comprehensive methodology for performing data mining projects.