Life Cycle Of AI Project I : Business đź’Ľ
First step of the AI Project Ladder is “Business Problem”. Most of the AI projects start with a business problem definition yet, again most of the time it gets least attention on it. But It must not be forgotten that, we you build something you always need foundation on it and it is “Business”.
Problem Definition :
Early seed of the AI project is Problem Definition. Problem definition leads project to big business impact. It is important to evaluate problem with every aspect and different perspectives. For this purpose, it need to be started with core or backbone team. Usually this includes seniors or team leads of company, business lead, Finance lead and of course one Project Manager(PM). When all member come together, project details and needs slowly revealed them selves. It’s important to note that, if one of the need cant be satisfied, project lost its applicability. When I write this as reason most of the engineer thinks about Model success, development and deployment type problems. According to my experiences, In AI project, First challenge comes from business and finance part. So it is crucial to calculate these risks.
Team Structure:
Project Manager : PM is the leader of the core team. It manages every aspect of the project. Most importantly he/she seeds business problem and builds bridge between stakeholder and core team. PM determines tasks, time tables, deadlines and checks other leaders teams capabilities. We can simple say that he/she is responsible for the project.
Business Lead: Business lead is the team lead of the business analytics or Analytic Marketing team. BL is responsible to define a business side of the problem and analyze it for further solutions. Also in future phases BL is responsible for analyzing business impact of the project.
Finance Lead: Finance lead investigates problem with economics and investment inspect. FL can be responsible for explore new finance problems that can be solve with AI but main aim of the role is making economical feasibility of the project .
Technical Lead / Leads: Mostly this part consist of more then one leader. Because developing AI project needs a lot of expertise and capability. For example One lead for Software Engineering for AI Research. It depends on the company size, adopted culture etc.
AI Feasibility:
Feasibility is key concept for every project. Projection of possible impact like spending analysis, return of the investment are important to giving a start a project or step back early. In Turkey 🇹🇷, there is a proverb called “whenever you turn from loss, there is gain”.
AI based solution are complex ones and you need to right business value to adopt or develop it. Additionally you need to develop simplest AI solution when you need one. If the problem can be solved with more simple way or just simple and controllable if-else statements then use it. Simple adopt “Occam’s Razor” principle for your project. Before the start the project its need to be calculated spending according to time and economic outcomes. How many men/month do your need ? How much effort need to adopt the solution ? Is it worth it to develop or just implement similar approach from state-of-the-art solution ? When is the break even point? A lot of question need to be answered before the start. Also we need to say that if the project need to be tailor made, the situation gets more expensive and complex to solve.
In last words, we can summarize it with “Invest enough time and attention for Business aspect of the AI project”.
After ward, I hope, We will cover more topic for AI Product Management. We have 5 stops until the destination, so please fasten our belts 🛫
