The analysis scoping doc is the first stage in Faire’s 

. This is the best and cheapest way to ensure the analysis owner and key stakeholder are aligned on the context, analytical approach, and impact of this work. The benefits of taking the extra step to fill out a scoping doc truly outweigh the cost — it increases analysis effectiveness and avoids scope creep down the line.

To see a real example of a scoped analysis at Faire, check out 

Great App Migration Deep Dive Scoping at Faire

The best way to cut scope is by scoping. You can’t cut corners up front; if it's not well-scoped, it'll end up being harder down the line.

Scoping becomes even more important if you believe you will need to make time/resource tradeoffs later in the process. It's cheap and lightweight; it's just words on paper, and it doesn’t have to be super articulate or perfect because it stays between the stakeholder and the analytics partner. And it's the best way to prioritize, for example, “If I had only two hours available, where would I spend it?” Taking the time to align on the North Star goals of the analysis and prioritize the most fruitful hypotheses is a good way to confirm that you're making tradeoffs in the right places.

Context is the biggest thing the PSA team was missing before we built out this process and template. It is much easier to have confidence in the analysis direction if we have a robust understanding of why we are working on this analysis in the first place.

Honestly, if we only did this section, we would already be 90% of the way toward setting the PSA team up for success in doing the right analysis.

I usually recommend analysts start with a 30-minute kickoff meeting with their PM. Scoping is just as important for them as it is for us — we’re aligning on how this analysis fits into the broader business goals and product roadmap, and getting clarity on what decisions it will inform. That alone would probably enable an analyst to sprint in the right direction, but it’s even better when they can narrow down to one or two really specific hypotheses before sprinting. The live meeting typically results in an exhaustive brain dump of hypotheses. From there, it’s pretty quick to clean up, prioritize, and send it back async to the PM for approval.

The best scoping docs have a really clear tie between the hypotheses and the impact, and actually get down to the granularity of discussing impact at the individual hypothesis level. Check out 

 to see how we do this in practice at Faire!

There have been times where we've scoped an analysis and realized that we don't actually need to do the analysis. Either the impact isn’t worth it, or the data isn't there to validate the hypotheses so there’s no point. It’s been really helpful in making sure we’re always working on the most important things.

Jolie Kemp Zwick

This is the first (and arguably most important) stage in Faire’s 5-step analysis process. The analysis scoping doc ensures there is clear upfront alignment on the context, ingoing hypotheses, analytical approach, and impact of each analysis we take on.

What is the purpose of an Analysis Scoping Doc?

 ensures the Analytics POC and the key stakeholder have a clear understanding of the hypotheses we are trying to validate / questions we are trying to answer with data and are aligned on how to tackle the problem at hand. 

ensure analysts are working on the highest priority needs

How does this analysis fit into what the team is working on?

What are the motivations for this analysis?

What are the key hypotheses the team is trying to validate?

How will the team use this data to make decisions?

What will next steps be based on this analysis?

What are the questions we need to answer to validate these hypotheses?

What data will we use to investigate these hypotheses and answer these questions?

Analysis Scoping Template at Faire

What is the purpose of an Analysis Scoping Doc?

Context

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