Adopting a product mindset

Treating data as a product is likely the most widely adopted concept from Data Mesh.

Although it is a concept that is far from unique to data, and has been applied to many other areas before being brought over to data.

Software engineering teams have been treating their applications as products. Take for example this article on the growing product-minded engineering teams, or this one on how a good engineer thinks like a product manager.

Admittedly, some of these teams are working on applications that make up part of the product their company sells, so product thinking would be natural.

But back-end software teams, such as platform and developer enablement teams, are also treating their applications as products. For example, see this presentation on why is it so hard to create a great platform-as-a-product?.

The approach these teams are taking are exactly the same as the approach data teams are starting to take. They are:

Focussing on the user, understanding their needs and requirements
Collaborating with their users to deliver something that meets those requirements
Providing comprehensive documentation so consumers of the product can self-serve use of the product
Applying a life-cycle to the product to manage changes and, eventually, decommissioning
Tracking metrics and KPIs to measure the success and impact of the products

In short, we’re applying a product mindset to the things we build.

And the reason we’re doing so is because we want to be sure we’re delivering the best value we can to the organisation, and to our users within the organisation.

Web links of the week

Being punny 😅

Just for the record, I bought a turntable.

(I do actually own a turntable, and I’m not alone - apparently sales of vintage audio equipment are booming.)

Upcoming workshops

Implementing a Data Mesh with Data Contracts - Antwerp, Belgium - June 5 2025
- Alongside the inaugural Data Mesh Live conference
- Sign up here

Thanks! If you’d like to support my work…

Thanks for reading this weeks newsletter - always appreciated!

If you’d like to support my work consider buying my book, Driving Data Quality with Data Contracts, or if you have it already please leave a review on Amazon.

Enjoy your weekend!

Andrew