Agile Data Science

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 Agile Data Science

About the Tutorial

Agile is a software development methodology that helps in building software through
incremental sessions using short iterations of 1 to 4 weeks so that the development is
aligned with the changing business needs. Agile Data science comprises of a combination
of agile methodology and data science. In this tutorial, we have used appropriate examples
to help you understand agile development and data science in a general and quick way.

Audience
This tutorial has been prepared for developers and project managers to help them
understand the basics of agile principles and its implementation. After completing this
tutorial, you will find yourself at a moderate level of expertise, from where you can
advance further with implementation of data science and agile methodology.

Prerequisites
It is important to have basic knowledge of data science modules and software development
concepts such as software requirements, coding along with testing.

Copyright & Disclaimer

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 Agile Data Science

Table of Contents
About the Tutorial ............................................................................................................................................ i

Audience ........................................................................................................................................................... i

Prerequisites ..................................................................................................................................................... i

Copyright & Disclaimer ..................................................................................................................................... i

Table of Contents ............................................................................................................................................ ii

1. Agile Data Science – Introduction ............................................................................................................. 1

2. Agile Data Science – Methodology Concepts............................................................................................. 3

Daily Stand-up ................................................................................................................................................. 4

User Story ........................................................................................................................................................ 4

What is Scrum? ................................................................................................................................................ 5

Why Scrum Master? ........................................................................................................................................ 6

Benefits of Scrum ............................................................................................................................................ 7

Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................... 7

3. Agile Data Science – Data Science Process ................................................................................................ 8

4. Agile Data Science – Agile Tools and Installation..................................................................................... 11

Local Environmental Setup ............................................................................................................................ 11

5. Agile Data Science – Data Processing in Agile .......................................................................................... 13

Structured data.............................................................................................................................................. 13

Semi-structured data ..................................................................................................................................... 13

Unstructured data ......................................................................................................................................... 13

6. Agile Data Science – SQL versus NoSQL ................................................................................................... 15

Why NoSQL for agile? .................................................................................................................................... 16

MongoDB Installation .................................................................................................................................... 18

7. Agile Data Science – NoSQL and Dataflow programming ........................................................................ 22

Dataflow of NoSQL ........................................................................................................................................ 22

8. Agile Data Science – Collecting and Displaying Records .......................................................................... 24

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9. Agile Data Science – Data Visualization ................................................................................................... 27

10. Agile Data Science – Data Enrichment ..................................................................................................... 30

11. Agile Data Science – Working with Reports............................................................................................. 32

12. Agile Data Science – Role of Predictions ................................................................................................. 34

Predictive Analytics ....................................................................................................................................... 34

Making Predictions ........................................................................................................................................ 35

13. Agile Data Science – Extracting features with PySpark ............................................................................ 36

Overview of Spark ......................................................................................................................................... 36

14. Agile Data Science – Building a Regression Model................................................................................... 37

15. Agile Data Science – Deploying a predictive system ................................................................................ 41

16. Agile Data Science – SparkML ................................................................................................................. 44

Why learn Spark ML for Agile? ...................................................................................................................... 44

ML Algorithms ............................................................................................................................................... 44

17. Agile Data Science – Fixing Prediction Problem ....................................................................................... 46

18. Agile Data Science – Improving Prediction Performance ......................................................................... 49

19. Agile Data Science – Creating better scene with agile and data science .................................................. 53

Build a better plan ......................................................................................................................................... 53

Predictive Analysis and Big data .................................................................................................................... 54

20. Agile Data Science – Implementation of Agile ......................................................................................... 55

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 1. Agile Data Science – Introduction Agile Data Science

Agile data science is an approach of using data science with agile methodology for web
application development. It focusses on the output of the data science process suitable for
effecting change for an organization. Data science includes building applications that
describe research process with analysis, interactive visualization and now applied machine
learning as well.

The major goal of agile data science is to -

document and guide explanatory data analysis to discover and follow the critical path to a
compelling product.

Agile data science is organized with the following set of principles:

Continuous Iteration
This process involves continuous iteration with creation tables, charts, reports and
predictions. Building predictive models will require many iterations of feature engineering
with extraction and production of insight.

Intermediate Output
This is the track list of outputs generated. It is even said that failed experiments also have
output. Tracking output of every iteration will help creating better output in the next
iteration.

Prototype Experiments
Prototype experiments involve assigning tasks and generating output as per the
experiments. In a given task, we must iterate to achieve insight and these iterations can
be best explained as experiments.

Integration of data
The software development life cycle includes different phases with data essential for –

 customers
 developers, and
 the business

The integration of data paves way for better prospects and outputs.

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Pyramid data value

The above pyramid value described the layers needed for “Agile data science”
development. It starts with a collection of records based on the requirements and plumbing
individual records. The charts are created after cleaning and aggregation of data. The
aggregated data can be used for data visualization. Reports are generated with proper
structure, metadata and tags of data. The second layer of pyramid from the top includes
prediction analysis. The prediction layer is where more value is created but helps in
creating good predictions that focus on feature engineering.

The topmost layer involves actions where the value of data is driven effectively. The best
illustration of this implementation is “Artificial Intelligence”.

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2. Agile Data Science – Methodology Concepts Agile Data Science

In this chapter, we will focus on the concepts of software development life cycle called
“agile”. The Agile software development methodology helps in building a software through
increment sessions in short iterations of 1 to 4 weeks so the development is aligned with
changing business requirements.

There are 12 principles that describe the Agile methodology in detail:

Satisfaction of customers
The highest priority is given to customers focusing on the requirements through early and
continuous delivery of valuable software.

Welcoming new changes

Changes are acceptable during software development. Agile processes is designed to work
in order to match the customer’s competitive advantage.

Delivery
Delivery of a working software is given to clients within a span of one to four weeks.

Collaboration
Business analysts, quality analysts and developers must work together during the entire
life cycle of project.

Motivation
Projects should be designed with a clan of motivated individuals. It provides an
environment to support individual team members.

Personal conversation
Face-to-face conversation is the most efficient and effective method of sending information
to and within a development team.

Measuring progress
Measuring progress is the key that helps in defining the progress of project and software
development.

Maintaining constant pace

Agile process focusses on sustainable development. The business, the developers and the
users should be able to maintain a constant pace with the project.

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Monitoring
It is mandatory to maintain regular attention to technical excellence and good design to
enhance the agile functionality.

Simplicity
Agile process keeps everything simple and uses simple terms to measure the work that is
not completed.

Self-organized terms
An agile team should be self-organized and should be independent with the best
architecture; requirements and designs emerge from self-organized teams.

Review the work

It is important to review the work at regular intervals so that the team can reflect on how
the work is progressing. Reviewing the module on a timely basis will improve performance.

Daily Stand-up
Daily stand-up refers to the daily status meeting among the team members. It provides
updates related to the software development. It also refers to addressing obstacles of
project development.

Daily stand-up is a mandatory practice, no matter how an agile team is established

regardless of its office location.

The list of features of a daily stand-up are as follows:

 The duration of daily stand-up meet should be roughly 15 minutes. It should not
extend for a longer duration.

 Stand-up should include discussions on status update.

 Participants of this meeting usually stand with the intention to end up meeting
quickly.

User Story
A story is usually a requirement, which is formulated in few sentences in simple language
and it should be completed within an iteration. A user story should include the following
characteristics:

 All the related code should have related check-ins.

 The unit test cases for the specified iteration.
 All the acceptance test cases should be defined.
 Acceptance from product owner while defining the story.

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What is Scrum?
Scrum can be considered as a subset of agile methodology. It is a lightweight process and
includes the following features:

 It is a process framework, which includes a set of practices that need to be followed

in consistent order. The best illustration of Scrum is following iterations or sprints.

 It is a “lightweight” process meaning that the process is kept as small as possible,

to maximize the productive output in given duration specified.

Scrum process is known for its distinguishing process in comparison with other
methodologies of traditional agile approach. It is divided into the following three
categories:

 Roles
 Artifacts
 Time Boxes

Roles define the team members and their roles included throughout the process. The
Scrum Team consists of the following three roles:

 Scrum Master
 Product Owner
 Team

The Scrum artifacts provide key information that each member should be aware of. The
information includes details of product, activities planned, and activities completed. The
artefacts defined in Scrum framework are as follows:

 Product backlog
 Sprint backlog
 Burn down chart
 Increment

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Time boxes are the user stories which are planned for each iteration. These user stories
help in describing the product features which form part of the Scrum artefacts. The product
backlog is a list of user stories. These user stories are prioritized and forwarded to the
user meetings to decide which one should be taken up.

Why Scrum Master?

Scrum Master interacts with every member of the team. Let us now see the interaction of
the Scrum Master with other teams and resources.

Product Owner
The Scrum Master interacts the product owner in following ways:

 Finding techniques to achieve effective product backlog of user stories and

managing them.

 Helping team to understand the needs of clear and concise product backlog items.

 Product planning with specific environment.

 Ensuring that product owner knows how to increase the value of product.

 Facilitating Scrum events as and when required.

Scrum Team
The Scrum Master interacts with the team in several ways:

 Coaching the organization in its Scrum adoption.

 Planning Scrum implementations to the specific organization.

 Helping employees and stakeholders to understand the requirement and phases of

product development.

 Working with Scrum Masters of other teams to increase effectiveness of the

application of Scrum of the specified team.

Organization
The Scrum Master interacts with organization in several ways. A few are mentioned below:

 Coaching and scrum team interacts with self-organization and includes a feature of
cross functionality.

 Coaching the organization and teams in such areas where Scrum is not fully
adopted yet or not accepted.

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Benefits of Scrum
Scrum helps customers, team members and stakeholders collaborate. It includes time-
boxed approach and continuous feedback from the product owner ensuring that the
product is in working condition. Scrum provides benefits to different roles of the project.

Customer
The sprints or iterations are considered for shorter duration and user stories are designed
as per priority and are taken up at sprint planning. It ensures that every sprint delivery,
customer requirements are fulfilled. If not, the requirements are noted and are planned
and taken for sprint.

Organization
Organization with the help of Scrum and Scrum masters can focus on the efforts required
for development of user stories thus reducing work overload and avoiding rework if any.
This also helps in maintaining increased efficiency of development team and customer
satisfaction. This approach also helps in increasing the potential of the market.

Product Managers
The main responsibility of the product managers is to ensure that the quality of product is
maintained. With the help of Scrum Masters, it becomes easy to facilitate work, gather
quick responses and absorb changes if any. Product managers also verify that the designed
product is aligned as per the customer requirements in every sprint.

Development Team
With time-boxed nature and keeping sprints for a smaller duration of time, development
team becomes enthusiastic to see that the work is reflected and delivered properly. The
working product increments each level after every iteration or rather we can call them as
“sprint”. The user stories which are designed for every sprint become customer priority
adding up more value to the iteration.

Conclusion
Scrum is an efficient framework within which you can develop software in teamwork. It is
completely designed on agile principles. ScrumMaster is there to help and co-operate the
team of Scrum in every possible way. He acts like a personal trainer who helps you stick
with designed plan and perform all the activities as per the plan. The authority of
ScrumMaster should never extend beyond the process. He/she should be potentially
capable to manage every situation.

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3. Agile Data Science – Data Science Process Agile Data Science

In this chapter, we will understand the data science process and terminologies required to
understand the process.

“Data science is the blend of data interface, algorithm development and technology in
order to solve analytical complex problems”.

Data science is an interdisciplinary field encompassing scientific methods, processes and

systems with categories included in it as Machine learning, math and statistics knowledge
with traditional research. It also includes a combination of hacking skills with substantive
expertise. Data science draws principles from mathematics, statistics, information science,
and computer science, data mining and predictive analysis.

The different roles that form part of the data science team are mentioned below:

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Customers
Customers are the people who use the product. Their interest determines the success of
project and their feedback is very valuable in data science.

Business Development
This team of data science signs in early customers, either firsthand or through creation of
landing pages and promotions. Business development team delivers the value of product.

Product Managers
Product managers take in the importance to create best product, which is valuable in
market.

Interaction designers
They focus on design interactions around data models so that users find appropriate value.

Data scientists
Data scientists explore and transform the data in new ways to create and publish new
features. These scientists also combine data from diverse sources to create a new value.
They play an important role in creating visualizations with researchers, engineers and web
developers.

Researchers
As the name specifies researchers are involved in research activities. They solve
complicated problems, which data scientists cannot do. These problems involve intense
focus and time of machine learning and statistics module.

Adapting to Change
All the team members of data science are required to adapt to new changes and work on
the basis of requirements. Several changes should be made for adopting agile
methodology with data science, which are mentioned as follows:

 Choosing generalists over specialists.

 Preference of small teams over large teams.
 Using high-level tools and platforms.
 Continuous and iterative sharing of intermediate work.

Note:

In the Agile data science team, a small team of generalists uses high-level tools that are
scalable and refine data through iterations into increasingly higher states of value.

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Consider the following examples related to the work of data science team members:

 Designers deliver CSS.

 Web developers build entire applications, understand the user experience, and
interface design.

 Data scientists should work on both research and building web services including
web applications.

 Researchers work in code base, which shows results explaining intermediate

results.

 Product managers try identifying and understanding the flaws in all the related
areas.

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4. Agile Data Science – Agile Tools and Agile Data Science

Installation

In this chapter, we will learn about the different Agile tools and their installation. The
development stack of agile methodology includes the following set of components:

Events
An event is an occurrence that happens or is logged along with its features and
timestamps.

An event can come in many forms like servers, sensors, financial transactions or actions,
which our users take in our application. In this complete tutorial, we will use JSON files
that will facilitate data exchange among different tools and languages.

Collectors
Collectors are event aggregators. They collect events in a systematic manner to store and
aggregate bulky data queuing them for action by real time workers.

Distributed document
These documents include multinode (multiple nodes) which stores document in a specific
format. We will focus on MongoDB in this tutorial.

Web application server

Web application server enables data as JSON through client through visualization, with
minimal overhead. It means web application server helps to test and deploy the projects
created with agile methodology.

Modern Browser
It enables modern browser or application to present data as an interactive tool for our
users.

Local Environmental Setup

For managing data sets, we will focus on the Anaconda framework of python that includes
tools for managing excel, csv and many more files. The dashboard of Anaconda framework
once installed is as shown below. It is also called the “Anaconda Navigator”:

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The navigator includes the “Jupyter framework” which is a notebook system that helps to
manage datasets. Once you launch the framework, it will be hosted in the browser as
mentioned below:

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