Introduction

Do you often work with reports in Excel? Or regularly build dashboards and visualizations in Tableau or Power BI? If you answered yes to either question – and you want to transition into data science – you’ve come to the right place!

Business Intelligence (BI) professionals hold a sizeable advantage over most other folks transitioning into data science. Think about it:

• You are already working with data on a daily basis
• You are part of the data team (are might even be working with data scientists)
• Possess a healthy understanding of the domain, aka, you are familiar with the business context
• The data exploration steps are a breeze – you do the basic ones everyday!

We face this question from a lot of BI/MIS/reporting professionals. That prompted us to list down our thoughts in this 11 step learning path.

In addition, Sunil Ray has explored each step in a lot more detail in this excellent article. He has expertly provided real-world examples you can relate to and also highlighted how you can overcome challenges at each step during your transition into data science. The article got a very positive feedback from our community so make sure you check it out.

The infographic detailing each of these steps is provided below. Download it, print it out and keep it handy during your data science transition journey! And if you have any feedback or want to share your experience with us, go ahead and let us know in the comments section below this article.

Note: The terms Business Intelligence, MIS, reporting, dashboarding have been used interchangeably in the infographic. There is very little difference and a lot of overlap in these roles and designations.