A Guide to Data Products: Everything You Need to Understand, Plan, and Implement
Written by Practitioners for Practitioners
We at Eckerson Group are big believers in data products. They promise to address the core problems we see with EVERY client, which can be expressed in this mantra:
“Business users can’t find the right data; when they find it, they can’t access it; when they access it, they don’t trust it.” ?
Baked into this mantra are the data problems afflicting most organizations: a backlog of data requests, data silos, poor governance, inconsistent results, minimal data sharing, and frustrated business users. In our opinion, data products can address most of these ailments.
To help you transform your data operation into a product management juggernaut, we’ve created a Guide to Data Products. This online resource offers 18 assets designed to help you understand, plan, and implement data products. Or view individual content items in the links below.
Understand Data Products
To get a comprehensive view of data products, check out “How to Create, Govern, and Manage Data Products”, a multi-media report based on our December 2023 virtual event. (Or if you just want the slides, click here.) If you want a practitioner’s view, I’d highly recommend watching my interview with Henrik Strandberg, who has applied product management principles to running a data team at a major publishing house. ?
To understand data products, know that data products are a subset of data assets with distinct characteristics. (See image below).
In addition, there are many types of data products, depending on the target audience. The degree of governance rigor increases as the audience moves from technical users to internal business users to external customers. ?(See below.)
You also might be interested in an article describing the differences between a data catalog and a data marketplace, a blog on how to create a data product mindset, and a report that examines the current state of data products and adoption trends. All worth reading!
Plan for Data Products
To learn how to launch a customer-driven data product management team, there is no better resource than Henrik Strandberg’s six-chapter e-book on the topic. In it, Strandberg recounts his experiences delivering data products and teases out numerous lessons learned, including the importance of justifying the value of every product initiative.
I love the chart below by Henrik, which shows how a multi-faceted product team interacts with a customer to implement a solution by“communicating” (customer services sub-team), “committing” (product management team), and “completing” (data engineering team).
Other resources in this section include a webinar on the intersection of data products, AI, and data fabric; an article that explains why a data marketplace is the missing ingredient in a data mesh; and a multi-media report that explores the relationship between data mesh, data fabric, and data products.
Finally, there is an article on the 12 pitfalls to avoid when implementing data products. My two favorite pitfalls: “not educating executives about program management” and “appointing inexperienced product managers.” Check it out!
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Implement Data Products
Once your organization has implemented more than a handful of data products, you need to publish them so business users can find, evaluate, and access them. The best way to do this is with an internal data marketplace. Our partner, Harbr Data offers an excellent guide for launching an internal data marketplace, including key characteristics, personas supported, and what to look for in a data marketplace platform. A data marketplace can run on top of an existing data platform or serve as an end-to-end platform for creating data pipelines and data products. Eckerson calls this a data product platform. (See below.)
If you want to learn best practices for implementing data products, check out these articles: “Best Practices for Developing and Scaling Data Products,” “7 Steps for Building a Valuable Data Product”, and “Four Traps to Avoid When Developing Data Products.” If you are looking for data product platforms, check out this Deep Dive report that profiles three data product platforms, including Harbr, Snowflake, and Dawex.
Upcoming Webinar on Data Products
If you prefer live content, we are bringing together data product experts on Friday, May 31st at 1:00 p.m. eastern to discuss how to understand, plan, and implement data products. I will be joined by my colleague Jay Piscioneri as well as partners Anthony Cosgrove of Harbr Data and Henrik Strandberg, a data products practitioner to discuss how to implement data products successfully. Here’s the link to register. See you there!
Sincerely,
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