Defining Business Objectives

This is where things get specific. As a result of your research and meetings, you should construct a concrete primary objective agreed upon by the project sponsors and other business units affected by the results. This goal will eventually be translated from something as nebulous as "reducing customer churn" to specific data mining objectives that will guide your analytics.

Task List

Be sure to take notes on the following points for later incorporation into the project plan. Remember to keep goals realistic.

• Describe the problem you want to solve using data mining.
• Specify all business questions as precisely as possible.
• Determine any other business requirements (such as not losing any existing customers while increasing cross-sell opportunities).
• Specify expected benefits in business terms (such as reducing churn among high-value customers by 10%).