Business Success Criteria

The goal ahead may be clear, but will you know once you're there? It's important to define the nature of business success for your data mining project before proceeding further. Success criteria fall into two categories:

• Objective. These criteria can be as simple as a specific increase in the accuracy of audits or an agreed-upon reduction in churn.
• Subjective. Subjective criteria such as "discover clusters of effective treatments" are more difficult to pin down, but you can agree upon who makes the final decision.

Task List

• As precisely as possible, document the success criteria for this project.
• Make sure each business objective has a correlative criterion for success.
• Align the arbiters of the subjective measurements of success. If possible, take notes on their expectations.