The Data Product Manager makes the decision on the most valuable Information Product to deliver next, that is literately their job

#AgileDataWoW

Lenka Horanska asked me this:

“From my experience, I’ve often seen the traditional committee approach to prioritization, and shifting away from that requires significant change. What’s your experience, and how did you navigate that shift?”

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The answer is I rarely see data teams make this shift. In response I have focussed on patterns that help data teams herd the cats, patterns that help remove as much waste as possible from the committee approach.

Juha Korpela replied with this:

“The way I see it, there can only be one person who decides the prioritization”

If I think about my role as Product Manager at AgileData, I make the prioritisation for our product. I engage with partners and customers to understand what they need, I look at the market to see where there are opportunities, I think about where we want to be in 1, 2 and 5 years from now.

I negotiate with my co-founder Nigel Vining on what is feasible, and then I make a call on where the next bit of investment will potentially return the most value.

I like this definition for a Product Manager:

“The person responsible for the value and viability of what gets built.”

Another definition I like is

“A mini CEO”

When I think back to the successful data teams I have worked with, there was always a leader who negotiated with the stakeholders on what could be built next, they understood the value of each of those things, and then finally they make the call on who is on first and what is on second. They acted like the CEO of the data business.

So the job of a Data Product Manager is to order the Information Products, so the data team knows what to work on next.

Which brings me back to patterns on how to navigate from a committee that decides most things are priority one, or the loudest voice wins, even when it’s not the most valuable thing, to a Data Product Manager who collaborates with these stakeholders but at the end of the day they make the decision of what’s next.

This is a set of patterns I don’t have in my toolkit.

Anybody else got some suggestions for Lenka on how to make the transition?