This is a challenging subject. Here is a start:
1) Getting to failure mode quickly – analytics effort is too valuable and the need to stop doing pointless work is great. Every project has a failure mode and the faster you can find it in an analytics project the more mature the effort is. Every part of the project has a failure mode. (Side note: how different this is from many ‘technical’ projects, especially IT projects).
2) Not making the same mistake twice – look to Dr. John Elder for common mistakes made by talented people. The least a mature team can achieve is not repeating mistakes in their work. Home – ERI.
3) Catching your own mistakes – closely related- but creating a mechanism to catch common errors is a level of maturity
4) Repeatability – mature efforts have a level of repeatability across challenging and varied projects. This is a high mark. The data and problem statement present unique problems that work against any repeatable effort or thought process. TBD on whether this capability makes it into the CMM model for Advanced Analytics.
I invite the reader to extend and revise.
The Analytic Executive 