Why So Many Data Science Projects Fail to Deliver

This article is based on an in-depth study of the data science efforts in three large, private-sector Indian banks with collective assets exceeding $200 million. The study included onsite observations; semistructured interviews with 57 executives, managers, and data scientists; and the examination of archival records. The five obstacles and the solutions for overcoming them emerged from an inductive analytical process based on the qualitative data. More and more companies are embracing data science as a function and a capability. But many of them have not been able to consistently derive business value from their investments in big data, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.1