Why Big Data? Towards a Project Assessment Framework

Technological evolution and consequent increasing of society and organization information dependency was an important driver to escalation of data volume and variety. At same time, market evolution requires capability to find new paths to improve products/services, client satisfaction and to avoid cost increase associated with it. The relevance of using Big Data for different industries and knowing how to implement it, is something that raises many doubts and discussion. In a Big Data context it is important to evaluate organization needs and understanding if those needs are satisfied with Big Data capabilities, i.e., if they really need Big Data. For that reason, this paper presents a framework, namely BigDAF, capable of measuring a technological/business problem in a Big Data spectrum. This framework aims to help organizations and researchers to understand, not only the meaning of Big Data issue, but also the key factors that determines the necessity of a “Big Data investment”. The framework assessment was applied using three case studies.