What Does (Should) an Analyst Do? A Brief Introduction for New Analysts

What does an analyst do A common misperception among nonanalysts including some managers and sponsors is that the analysts job consists of three tasks enter data into a computer, run a computer model, and provide tables or plots to summarize the numbers that the model spits out. Unfortunately, the source of this misperception is all too often the analysts themselves. So perhaps a better question to ask is What should an analyst do This paper provides a fairly top-level discussion of the various tasks that a good analyst will undertake during the course of an analysis project. The intent here is NOT to provide an exhaustive treatise on how to conduct analyses, but to provide a broad overview of the kinds of tasks an analyst needs to be able to perform and to identify fundamental practices referred to as axioms that characterize a good analyst. The goal is to improve the quality of analysis by accomplishing two things 1 Moving away from a turn-the-crank analysis mentality by providing new analysts with a better understanding of what it takes to conduct an excellent analysis and by reinforcing the point that the goal of analysis is to provide insight, not numbers and 2 Helping new analysts and their supervisors identify training needs by highlighting the skills vital to a good analyst. Throughout my 30-year career, I have had the opportunity to work with many analysts from multiple laboratories and observe the practices that differentiate a good analyst from a not-so-good analyst. The material contained in this paper is based on those observations and on my experience as a senior analyst within the Warfare Systems Department.