# Real-Time Analysis By:: [[Ross Jackson]] 2023-04-15 Depth or speed? Analysts often struggle to find the right balance between these two competing demands. It takes time to delve deeply into a topic. Conducting a thorough search of the literature could take months of nothing but reading. Data collection, depending on all that is needed, could take months or more. Lastly, modeling, interpretation, and report writing could easily take weeks. A “quick” traditional analytic project could reasonably take four to six months to execute. At this time, the analysis often benefits from the development of context. This is seldom what is needed. Real-time analysis is conducted at the moment it is needed. Perhaps the analyst takes five minutes as the meeting is conducted to sketch something out, but the analysis isn’t much more than an insight occurring at the moment. Which is more useful? This isn’t an easy question to answer. One could spend years writing a paper few people have read over the course of a decade, and minutes writing a post that thousands of people read within a day. Speed is its own form of quality. Most of the development of analysts tends to be on conducting analysis focused on depth. This makes them good at that form of analysis. Almost no training is conducted on developing the ability of an analyst to conduct real-time analysis. If this form of analysis is what is needed, this is a consequential omission. Perhaps there would be an organizational benefit if people were trained in conducting and consuming real-time analysis. #### Related Items [[Analytics]] [[Speed]] [[Problem Solving]] [[Learning]]