If you want to run successful data science projects, you can rely on a framework you learned in grade school.

It's called The Scientific Method.

Here are the steps, and how they apply to data science for business.

#1: Observation / question

State the problem.

• Losing customers?

• Designing a new product?

• Spending too much money?

#2: Research topic

To research a potential data science project, you need to do two things.

• Gather and investigate data

• Interview relevant stakeholders

#3: Hypothesis

Now you're becoming a subject matter expert.

Frame your upcoming work with a best guess at the answer.

#4: Experimentation

There are five pieces to a holistic data science experiment:

• Independent variables (features)

• Feature engineering

• Dependent variables (outcome or target variable)

• Model selection

• Model parameters

#5: Analyze results

The most important part of your experiment?

Model evaluation.

#6: Report conclusions

Wrap your work in a deliverable that your stakeholders can understand and consume.

#7: Iterate

Armed with new information, cycle through the process until you reach a conclusion.