CRISP-DM Twenty Years Later: From Data Mining Processes to Data Science Trajectories

TLDR

CRISP‑DM, originating in the late 1990s, remains the de facto standard for data mining and knowledge discovery, though the field has largely shifted toward data science in the past two decades. The study examines whether CRISP‑DM remains suitable for data science projects, concluding that it is still appropriate for goal‑directed, process‑driven initiatives. The authors propose a trajectory‑based model that categorizes projects as goal‑directed, exploratory, or data‑management, and evaluate it against seven real‑life examples and 51 NIST Big Data use cases. They anticipate that this categorization will aid project planning by clarifying time and cost characteristics.

Abstract

CRISP-DM(CRoss-Industry Standard Process for Data Mining) has its origins in the second half of the nineties and is thus about two decades old. According to many surveys and user polls it is still the de facto standard for developing data mining and knowledge discovery projects. However, undoubtedly the field has moved on considerably in twenty years, with data science now the leading term being favoured over data mining. In this paper we investigate whether, and in what contexts, CRISP-DM is still fit for purpose for data science projects. We argue that if the project is goal-directed and process-driven the process model view still largely holds. On the other hand, when data science projects become more exploratory the paths that the project can take become more varied, and a more flexible model is called for. We suggest what the outlines of such a trajectory-based model might look like and how it can be used to categorise data science projects (goal-directed, exploratory or data management). We examine seven real-life exemplars where exploratory activities play an important role and compare them against 51 use cases extracted from the NIST Big Data Public Working Group. We anticipate this categorisation can help project planning in terms of time and cost characteristics.