Data Driven Culture/Product Management

 There are 2 topics i see discussed heavily today in my connections/network or summits/round tables, they are about implementing a data driven culture, how to generate valuable insights using the data, applying AI, Machine Learning. The other aspect being Product Management, there are lot of sessions/talks about this topic, also lot of people wanting to becoming Product Managers. In a sense it seems like Data Analytics, Data Scientists and Product Manager are very glamorous titles to have. They are very responsible positions and care needs to be taken to make sure that one develops the needed skills for the above jobs. I would like to dwell a little further into these positions.

Data Driven Culture is more easily said than done, it requires a combination top/down and a bottom up approach as well. There has to be a complete embracement of the ideology by the leadership/business and technology. Everyone needs to have the understanding of what needs to be done with the data, the end state of data projects and most importantly the willingness to collaborate. Such a culture would enable better architecting of the infrastructure, good data governance/management, ability to choose the right infrastructure and platform. The focus needs to be on the value add rather just simple cost cutting, there are going to be times where certain transitions could cost money but for a eventual payoff later.This also brings up the point. of ability to using AI rin a responsible manner.

Since there is a lot of emphasis on data, it also feeds into the aspect of Product Management. Data can be used very effectively to build products, get feedback on products. Data can be a strong asset to improve customer experience and also provided value add behind the features. The type of data being represented in the product or being used to build products indicates the importance of data. Data can help with quantifiable measures, which can help in gauging how well the product is doing. There are different ways of getting feedback like user surveys, hackathons combined with interviews which can be very useful for Product Management, Having/being aware of such techniques help in grooming oneself about product management. It is a very important role which is at the intersection of Business/Customers and Stakeholders.

Product Management and Data Ops/Data Driven Culture will increasingly co-exists in the future, so focus on deriving valuable insights from data and the data culture is built to facilitate such initiatives.