• Use small teams, tightly focused on one aspect at a time.
• Don't try to build a grand analytics platform, instead solve particular problems and harvest a platform.
• Favor lightweight tools that allow you to gradually build up capability as you need it.
• Treat the analytics operation as an agile software development project, with the usual disciplines for agile application development.

Ken Collier is the Agile Analytics Practice Lead at Thoughtworks who has been pioneering the use of agile techniques for analytics.