Characterization of Usage Data with the Help of Data Classifications

Comprehensive data understanding is a key success driver for data analytics projects. Knowing the characteristics of the data helps a lot in selecting the appropriate data analysis techniques. Especially in data-driven product planning, knowledge about the data is a necessary prerequisite because data of the use phase is very heterogeneous. However, companies often do not have the necessary know-how or time to build up solid data understanding in connection with data analysis. In this paper, we develop a methodology to organize and categorize and thus understand use phase data in a way that makes it accessible to general data analytics workflows, following a design science research approach. We first present a knowledge base that lists typical use phase data from a product planning view. Second, we develop a taxonomy based on standard literature and real data objects, which covers the diversity of the data considered. The taxonomy provides 8 dimensions that support classification of use phase data and allows to capture data characteristics from a data analytics view. Finally, we combine both views by clustering the objects of the knowledge base according to the taxonomy. Each of the resulting clusters covers a typical combination of analytics relevant characteristics occurring in practice. By abstracting from the diversity of use phase data into artifacts with manageable complexity, our approach provides guidance to choose appropriate data analysis and AI techniques.