Applying the discipline of product management to data

I had a couple of nice responses and follow-up discussion to yesterdays post on applying product thinking to data, one of which asked if we should be applying the discipline of product management (people, processes, etc) to data products.

I think we should!

Product management is seen as crucial elsewhere in the business, and I personally have worked with some great product managers who had a real impact on our team and what we were building. Why would data products be any different?

It may start with data producers starting to apply that mindset, but really there are a bunch of product management activities that any team would benefit from someone taking on. Part of that is managing the products they create, and data products would be just one type of product they would be managing.

Could this be someones full time role, as a Data Product Manager?

I think it depends on the team size and the amount of data products they are creating.

For many teams introducing a new role of a data product manager might be overkill, and someone in their team can act like a product manager for their data products - probably the existing product manager, if they have one.

However, if a team or group are creating a lot of data products then it might make sense for someone to specialise in that role, allowing them to learn more about data products, data quality, governance, etc, alongside their product management experience.

A quick search on LinkedIn showed there are quite a few Data Product Manager roles open, so some organisations do seem to feel they do need someone to specialise as one.

P.S. I won’t be writing this weekend as it’s been a busy week and I need to switch off for a bit! In fact, I’ll probably move to writing on weekdays only going forward, as I think that will be more sustainable for me and better quality for you. Have a great weekend!