CDO Matters Ep. 15 | Why CDOs Should Treat Data as a Product with Rishabh Dhingra

For CDOs to be successful today, they need to think more like a product manager. After all, product managers are responsible for every facet of their product. They determine which customer needs their products fulfill and define what success looks like for their product. And they’re ultimately responsible for reporting that performance to executive leadership. Hopefully those responsibilities sound familiar to listeners of the CDO Matters Podcast — except that for them, their core product is data. In our latest episode, Malcolm is interviewed by Rishabh Dhingra on the Inspired Podcast, where Malcolm shares his perspectives on the growing trend toward treating data as a product. CDOs who are considering the addition of the product management mindset into their business will find his perspectives refreshing — given the great value that he believes product managers, and treating data as a product, can bring to most data-driven organizations. Malcolm shares details on his expertise in the field of product management, having been a Product Manager, a Product Director and, ultimately, a Chief Product Officer (CPO). Having managed teams of product managers in several software companies through the heyday of the internet boom, Malcolm has first-hand experience working in highly agile and fast-paced environments — where quickly adapting to changing needs was a daily struggle. As Malcolm describes it, the core DNA of a good product manager is all about problem-solving — where professional product managers are trained specifically to determine the optimal combination of product attributes to address customer needs given known constraints on time, money or resources. Product managers also know how to build business cases to support investments in their products; otherwise, businesses wouldn’t invest in them. One of the biggest benefits of implementing more product management into data management is that they will provide the skills necessary to build business cases for data and analytics products — being a standard operating procedure in the world of product development. When it comes to data as a product, Malcolm believes many data leaders are often missing the mark by incorrectly focusing efforts on defining products rather than customer needs. He explains that it ultimately doesn’t matter if a data product is a field, an attribute or an entire table — but what matters is if a customer need is solved. The need for data people to take a “bottoms-up” approach to data products — where the product is a function of the available “raw materials” — is a major flaw in data organizations that product managers could help a CDO avoid since product managers are inherently focused on solving customer needs. Why should companies consider managing data as a product? According to Malcolm, companies that deeply integrate product management practices into the field of data management — and who deeply embrace all aspects of data as a product — will drive competitive differentiation. The benefits of integrating product management practices into data management are many, but his highlights include better business cases, resource prioritization, cost management and many others as just a small subset of the universe of benefits with more focus on data as a product. By the end of this episode, current or aspiring CDOs who have not already considered the integration of product management practices into their data organizations — both for products and the supporting organization — should have a roadmap for implementing these PM practices into their data organization.