I was waiting for a call this afternoon, and thinking about all this analyst credibility stuff that’s been flying around the Web. I thought I’d set out my stall and say what I believed were the key facets of IT analysis as I would like to see it done. I started with transparency and clear explanation of results, and it sort of grew from there – before I knew it I’d made a word or two. Here they are – you can consider it my analyst manifesto 1.0, and I shall do my best to stick to it.
FREEDOM of research
RELEVANCE of results
EFFECTIVENESS of advice
EDUCATION, not evangelism
TRANSPARENCY of methodology
RESPONSIVENESS to requests
ATTRIBUTION of sources
DECLARATION of interests
EXPLANATION of conclusions
I was wondering whre you might get your last ‘E’ from Jon! Education – interesting. There are many camps in the analyst world, and I think this list neatly captures the camp that I think are the good guys. As I said in a much less eloquent way to a Bloor analyst a couple of months back: in this game, you’re either aiming to help make things simpler for people, or you’re part of the problem.
Jon,
This sounds excellent -I hope this will contaminate many other analysts and further differentiate the European independent crowd from the US pay-to-play and from the Borg.
Thanks – I wonder whether “Freedom” should read “Fairness”, but its a start!