Machine Learning is often referred to as a panacea to solve many organizations' problems. However, without a guiding framework to act upon many efforts are wasted on purpose non-valuable tasks. The ICON framework was built to align business value with software development in order to ensure resources are not wasted. The ICON framework is broken down into 4 parts

• Identify - This part sets up the object from the start of the effort. Questions asked in this phase are: What are you trying to do? Why do we need this? and What is valuable to us?
• Collect - This phase is all about the data needed to reach the goals. Questions asked in this phase are: What data do we need? How do we get the data? How do we prepare the data?
• Operate - This phase is all about operationalizing efforts to create value. Questions asked in this phase are: What do we build? How do we scale our process? What tools do we need?
• Narrate - This phase is about narrating how your process was successfully able to create value. Questions asked in this phase are: Did we build the right thing? Is this working as expected? Are we getting value?

By adhering to the ICON framework during the development cycle stakeholders and developers can contextualize if their efforts are aligned with creating business value. This talk will go over how to incorporate the ICON framework into your development cycles.