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Published by Neptune.ai Introduction
In this article, I have documented the best practices and approaches to build a productive Machine Learning team that creates positive business impact and generates economic value within corporate entities, be it startup or enterprise. If you do Machine Learning, either as an individual contributor or team manager, I’ll help you understand your current team structure and how to improve internal processes, systems and culture. We’ll explore how to build truly disruptive ML teams that drive successful outcomes. Why build an ML team? Artificial Intelligence (AI) is predicted to create global economic value of nearly USD 13 Trillion by 2030 [1]. Most companies across diverse industries and sectors have realized the potential value of AI, and are well on the way to becoming an AI-first entity. From tech companies building cutting-edge AI products like self-driving cars or smart speakers, to traditional enterprises leveraging AI for non-glamorous use cases like fraud detection or customer service automation, the potential of AI to deliver commercial impact is beyond doubt. The adoption of AI in industry is accelerated by a number of trends:
In the following section, I will describe the challenges in building Machine Learning teams for startups and enterprises respectively. Challenges for startups Startups, in the early stages of operations, are typically bootstrapped and have limited budgets to deploy for building machine learning teams. If your startup has a core product or service founded on AI, then it’s imperative to hire machine learning talent early on to build the MVP, and raise funding to hire more talent and scale the product. On the other hand, for startups whose core product or service is focused on other domains like finance, healthcare or education, AI will either be incidental to the core operations, or not essential until product-market fit is achieved. The main challenges of building ML teams in startups are:
In the face of such daunting challenges of machine learning work combined with general organizational challenges at startups [2], it becomes even more important for startups to hire and build the right machine learning team from the very beginning. Challenges for enterprise Unlike startups, big organizations and enterprises don’t suffer from lack of funding or budget to seed a machine learning team. The challenges in an enterprise are unique from one entity to another, but generally arise due to the size of the organization, internal bureaucracy and slower decision making processes – things that tend to benefit startups and help them ship products faster. Although today, it might appear that technology companies are ubiquitous, they’re still a minority compared to the vast number of traditional enterprises focused on diverse sectors like finance, FMCG, retail, healthcare, education and so on. Technology companies have a headstart when it comes to machine learning and AI, and their strong early focus and investment in AI R&D will ensure their dominance compared to their traditional counterparts. However, there are numerous challenges that traditional enterprises face in adopting and onboarding AI across the organization [3], which more often than not result in failed AI projects and reduced trust in the capacity and potential of AI [4]:
Profiles in a Machine Learning team Modern machine learning teams are truly diverse. Yet, at the core, they involve candidates who have strong analytical skills and the ability to understand data from different domains, train and deploy predictive models, and derive business or product insights from the same. SCOPING The first stage of scoping out an AI use case requires AI experts along with business or domain experts. Plenty of successful AI projects start with a deep understanding of the potential business problems that can be solved with AI, and require the combined intuition and understanding of seasoned technical and business experts. In this stage, the usual collaborators involve business leaders, product managers, AI team managers and perhaps one or more senior data scientists with deep, hands-on experience with the underlying data. DATA The second stage is focused on acquiring data, cleaning, processing from the raw form to structured format and storing it in specific on-premise databases or cloud repositories. In this stage, the role of the data engineer is prominent, alongside data scientists. The business and product managers serve a helpful role in providing access to the data, metadata and any preliminary business insights based on rudimentary analytics. MODELING The third stage involves core data science and machine learning modeling using the datasets prepared in the previous stage. In this stage data scientists, applied or research scientists are predominant in training initial models, refining them based on test set performance and feedback from cross-functional stakeholders, developing new algorithms if needed, and finally producing one or more candidate models that meet the required accuracy and latency benchmarks to take the models to production. DEPLOYMENT The final stage of the machine learning lifecycle is focused on deploying trained models to production, where they serve predictions from the inputs received from end users. In this stage, machine learning engineers take the models developed by the data/applied/research scientists and prepare them for production. If the models meet the predefined accuracy and latency benchmarks, the models are good to go live. Otherwise, ML engineers work on optimizing the model size, performance, latency and throughput. Models go through systematic A/B testing procedures before deciding which version(s) of the models are best suited for deployment. Next, I prepared detailed profiles for the different types of experts you may need for your ML team. Data Engineer Skills
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Data Scientist Skills
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Machine Learning Engineer Skills
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Research Scientist Skills
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Product Manager + Business Leader Skills
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Data Science / Machine Learning Manager Skills
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Building productive and impactful Machine Learning teams We explored the typical composition of a Machine Learning team, which includes a variety of different profiles specialized in specific aspects of building machine learning projects. However, the reality on the ground is that having a solid machine learning team is not a guarantee that the team will create and deliver massive business impact. The reality on the ground is that the vast majority of corporate AI projects fail, and a lot of these projects fail despite having a great machine learning team. In this section, I will dive deeper into the cultural, procedural and collaborative aspects of building impactful machine learning teams from first-principles. The success of a machine learning team is founded on several factors related to systems, processes, and culture. When built the wrong way, this will inevitably lead to failed projects and erosion of trust and confidence in the team, as well as machine learning as a business capability and competitive edge. 1. Working on the right AI use cases For a brand new machine learning team to deliver impact in an organization, it’s paramount that the team starts off on the right foot. Early traction is critical to build trust in the organization, evangelize the potential of AI across business verticals, and leverage early successes to deliver riskier or moonshot projects with greater impact. 2. Planning for success – measuring impact As part of the process of selecting and defining the right AI use cases, it’s fundamental to critically assess and evaluate the business impact and return on the investment in the particular machine learning project. The best approach for evaluation is by defining a set of metrics that address several aspects of the project and its potential impact. Technical metrics For classification models:
For regression models:
For deep learning models (depends on the particular application):
Business metrics Business metrics are defined by first-principles, and are often downstream metrics that are impacted by the machine learning models. For measuring outcomes, it’s crucial to a priori identify the relevant business metrics and track the effect of the machine learning models on the same during A/B testing, deployment, and continuously monitor live models. Standard business metrics aim to capture levels of trust, satisfaction, faults, and SLAs, among others. Once a candidate set of machine learning projects is scoped, defined and formulated from conception to production with associated set of metrics, each project needs to be evaluated by leadership teams from the perspective of high-level organizational goals to be achieved in a defined time period. Leaders need to balance the business impact (on the opline or bottomline), budget, team bandwidth, time savings, efficiency savings, and the urgency for delivering projects in the short-term vs. the long term. Executives need to incorporate multiple factors to arrive at a carefully considered decision to give the green signal for one or more machine learning projects. 3. Structured processes – Agile, Sprints Once a project is defined and has the go ahead from the leadership team, it is important to ensure that systems and structured processes are in place to ensure that the machine learning team can work unhindered and execute the project in a timely fashion as per the agreed plan. Key operational infrastructure like data warehouse, database management systems, data ETL pipelines, metadata storage and management platforms, data annotation frameworks and availability of labeled data, access to compute on-prem or in the cloud, licensed as well as open source tools and softwares that streamline the model training process, machine learning experiment, results and metadata management tools, A/B testing platforms, model deployment infrastructure and solutions, continuous model monitoring and dashboards are integral for a smooth data processing, model building, and deployment workflow. However, the existence of such key skeletal infrastructure for machine learning varies from one organization to another depending on how mature the machine learning organization or the company is. Apart from the infrastructure, processes related to planning tasks of the individual contributors of the project using sprints and agile frameworks need to be hardwired and accessible to all stakeholders of the project. While Agile processes have worked well for software projects, machine learning projects are different and may not be that well suited to the same frameworks. Although similarities like iterative model building and refining based on feedback exist, machine learning projects are more sophisticated, as the fundamental blocks include data and models in addition to code. While software engineering best practices like code review and versioning are very well established, the same rigor and structure is not always applied to data and machine learning models. Documentation is another aspect that is even more critical to keep track of multiple hypotheses, experiments, results and all the moving parts associated with machine learning projects. In the absence of well entrenched tools and best practices, most data science work tends to be highly inefficient where data scientists end up spending a lot of time on routine chores that can be automated. It’s imperative that managers try to reduce such barriers to more efficient and productive work, so that the machine learning teams can focus exclusively on their work. 4. Clear communication within and across teams Communication is an essential skill for data scientists. Machine learning is a more intricate discipline and the end results might often be too obscure for generalist and non-technical managers of data science, product or business teams to comprehend easily. However, communication is just the tip of the iceberg, and many more interpersonal skills like persuasion, empathy, collaboration are exercised on a regular basis whilst working in cross-functional teams. Writing emails of results or updates or slide presentations to stakeholders and leadership, live demos, expounding the project for product review documents, writing up the entire project for a blog meant for lay audience or for a journal or conference meant for a technical audience, requires strong writing skills. Typical data scientists may be more proficient in writing code than words, so the organization should invest in corporate training programs for data scientists that include training in written and spoken communication skills. Oral communication skills can’t be underestimated either, and are increasingly important in remote-first organizations. Effective stakeholder management involves building rapport and trust and establishing clear channels of communication, which is much harder to do if a data scientist is not able to speak and communicate clearly in an engaging and delightful manner. Although a lot of workplace productivity apps have created digital channels of reduced in-person communication, the power of live in-person communication with peers, stakeholders and leaders often gets the job done faster. Clear communication destroys information silos, so that each stakeholder is aware, updated and aligned with the progress of various machine learning projects. Regular meetings are important to have checks and balances, in addition to documented progress in tools to ensure that projects are moving in the right direction. 5. Effective collaboration with business Machine learning teams are typically part of the engineering or technology organizations in a company. While this makes natural sense for effective collaboration across colleagues from data, analytics, engineering functions, regular interaction with business teams is a must. Given the fact that most machine learning models are built on historical ‘business’ data that can change in a predictable manner due to new product or feature launches or seasonality patterns, as well as in an unpredictable manner, for instance, during Covid-19 lockdowns, machine learning teams must have a real-time awareness of how the business data is changing on the ground. Not only is it important to adjust the underlying hypotheses in the face of massive changes in customer behavior or new product launches, but also to correct the planned course of action if initial assumptions are violated or the data changes too dramatically for the machine learning models to be relevant or have the same impact as before. Business teams are in the best position to give feedback on early prototypes based on their domain expertise, validate new assumptions or ideas by doing customer research and surveys, and evaluating the impact of deployed machine learning models. For these reasons, the partnership between machine learning and business teams needs to be mutually beneficial and symbiotic. Leaders of machine learning teams need to build close ties with business teams and encourage team members to do the same. 6. Creating a culture of innovation For long-term success of machine learning teams, apart from working on the right use cases and facilitating collaborative work across the organization, it’s imperative to build a culture that embraces and rewards innovation. Here, leadership should lead by example and encourage innovation and R&D across different business verticals. For a machine learning team, it’s critical to make a mark in the ecosystem through patent applications, journal or conference publications, outreach and dissemination via meetups, workshops, seminars by leading experts, collaboration with startups and academic organizations as needed, and so on. Most organizations don’t focus on building such a thriving culture that promotes exchange and cross-fertilization of new ideas and technologies, which can often impact current organizational processes and thinking in a substantial way. Leaders also need to build strong diverse teams and hire new talent, from entry level graduates to experienced engineers and scientists. The inflow of new talent brings in novel ideas that can positively impact the work culture. Otherwise stasis sets in, teams can become narrow-minded, and decline in their capacity to innovate and launch impactful products. Meritocratic executive decisions strongly impact culture, both in terms of promoting talent that demonstrates a consistent track record of exceptional bar-raising work, as well as letting go of non-performing individuals or managers. The appropriate balance and culture in a team is an ongoing process, but it’s important for leaders to ensure that at no point in time, the members of a machine learning team are unmotivated and uninspired by the systems, processes, and culture within the organization. 7. Celebrating and sharing AI success stories Finally, given the low odds of success for AI projects at present, it’s important to make sure that any AI success stories are widely shared within the organization to attract the attention of other business teams who could potentially partner with the machine learning team. Furthermore, given the immense popularity of AI as a discipline, success stories might also attract potential new team members from within the company who feel motivated to upskill in machine learning and become a data scientist. It’s important to recognize the effort of the core contributors to the success of AI projects in a public manner within the company and not behind closed doors. It helps to build morale and confidence and foster a meritocratic culture within the team that will help them in their career development. Additionally, wherever possible, the leadership should take steps to share such AI success stories widely within the broader ecosystem in which the company operates, for instance, via company blogs, social media posts, podcasts or talks at meetups, workshops or conferences. For a machine learning team to continue to deliver strong performance and results, it’s critical to build a portfolio of successful projects starting from simpler ones to gradually more sophisticated ones with an ever increasing scope and commercial impact. The success of a machine learning team acts as a trigger and accelerates the digital and AI transformation of a company. In the highly competitive digital economy, companies that have invested early and invested a lot in AI have emerged as the early winners, for instance, the big tech companies. Thus, impactful machine learning teams act as a lever in the journey towards embracing and onboarding AI and transforming the company into a forward-looking, data-driven, AI-first company. References
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Published in BecomingHuman.ai tldr: Poor processes and culture can derail the success of many an exceptional AI team In part 1, I introduced a four-pronged framework for analysing the principal factors underlying the failure of corporate AI projects:
In the second part of the blog series, I will focus on core aspects of organizational processes and culture that companies should inculcate to ensure that their AI teams are successful and deliver significant business impact.  Figure 1. The Facade Culture (source: Dilbert.com) Culture Organizational culture is the foundation on which a company is built and shapes its future outcomes related to commercial impact and success, hiring and retention, as well as the spirit of innovation and creativity. Whilst organizational behaviour and culture have been studied for decades, it needs to be relooked in the context of new-age tech startups and enterprises. The success of such cutting-edge AI-first companies is highly correlated with the scale of innovation through new products and technology, which necessitates an open and progressive work culture. Typically, new startups on the block, especially those building a core AI product or service, are quick to adopt and foster a culture that promotes creativity, rapid experimentation and calculated risk-taking. Being lean and not burdened by any legacy, most tech startups are quick to shape the company culture in the image of the founders’ vision and philosophy (for better or worse). However, the number of tech companies that have become infamous for the lack of an inclusive and meritocratic culture are far too many. There are innumerable examples, from prominent tech startups like Theranos, Uber to big tech companies like Google and Facebook, where an open and progressive culture has at times taken a back seat. However, with the increasing focus on sustainability, diversity and inclusion, and ESG including better corporate governance, it is imperative for tech companies to improve organizational culture and not erode employee, consumer or shareholder trust or face real risks to the business from financial as well as regulatory authorities as recently experienced by BlackRock and Deliveroo. Here is a ready reckoner of some of the ways AI companies tend to lose sight of culture:
 Figure 2. How to scope AI projects (source: DeepLearning.ai) Process There are several processes that are integral for ensuring a successful AI outcome across the entire lifecycle from conception to production. However, from first-principles, the primary process that needs to be streamlined and managed well is identifying the right use cases for AI that have the potential to create significant commercial impact. In this blog, I will focus only on this particular aspect and expound on the other processes in separate blogs. What can go wrong in identifying the right set of AI use cases?
So, having listed a variety of issues that can go wrong in identifying an AI use case, how should one ideally go about scoping AI projects systematically? As per Figure 2, the strategy to scope an AI use case involves 5 steps: from identifying a business problem to brainstorming AI solutions to assessing feasibility and value to determining milestones and finally budgeting for resources. The scoping process starts with a careful dissection of business, not AI problems, that need to be solved for creating commercial value. As discussed above, if not done right, the rest of the AI journey in an organization is bound to fail. Secondly, it is important to brainstorm potential AI solutions across AI, engineering and product teams to shortlist a set of approaches and techniques that are practically feasible instead of going with the latest or most sophisticated AI model or algorithm. Thirdly, AI teams should assess the feasibility of shortlisted methods by creating a quick prototype, validating the approach based on literature survey or discussions with domain experts within the company or partner with external collaborators accordingly. If a particular method does not appear to be feasible, then teams should consider the alternative approaches until they are ruled out. Once the initial efforts have validated the use case, its feasibility and potential approaches, it is critical to define key business metrics, KPIs, acceptance or success criteria. These are not composed of the typical AI model metrics like precision, accuracy of F-1 score, but KPIs need to be defined that are directly correlated with the impact of the AI models on business goals e.g. retention, NPS, customer satisfaction amongst others. The final step involves program management of the entire project from allocating time, bandwidth of individual contributors in the AI as well as partner teams, budget for collecting or labeling data, hiring data scientists or buying software or infrastructure to setup and streamline the entire AI lifecycle. Tldr part 2:
Before you head out to build AI, first ask what are the business problems that are big enough and suitable for an AI-based solution? What business metrics and objectives ought to be targeted? Scope out the problem systematically to ensure the best chance of success. Build on the initial successes of AI and foster a meritocratic and open culture of innovation and cross-functional collaboration to build AI that solves a variety of business use cases. |
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