Understanding the roles required to effectively deliver data products

Successfully turning data into value requires collaboration across the organization. Data management, business, and IT teams need to work together to create, share, and consume highly available, understandable, and trusted data products with both humans and AI.

Companies have invested heavily in their data technology stacks and the skills to support them. However, given the complexity of modern organizations, there is a danger that departmental silos develop and effectiveness is reduced. Introducing a data product marketplace – a centralized, self-service space where data products and other assets are published, shared, and consumed in an intuitive way, unifies everyone involved in maximizing data use. It provides a collaborative space for the data management, business and IT perspectives, structuring roles and processes around turning data into value. 

How should Chief Data Officers (CDOs) and other data leaders structure their approach and teams? What roles should be involved? To help, this article provides an introduction to our latest ebook, which outlines the organization and technology required to deliver success.     

What is a data product?

Data products are central to providing seamless access to data for humans and AI. Highly-consumable, understandable and machine-readable data assets, they contain everything required for non-technical business employees and AI agents/models to confidently use data at scale. Clear data contracts and SLAs build trust and ensure robust governance and detailed lineage.

Data products have to meet a specific business need and be built on reliable, trustworthy data. That means their creation, sharing and consumption involves data management, IT and business teams. Each of these perspectives covers different skills and roles in the process.

The data management perspective  

Led by the CDO or Chief Data & Analytics Officer (CDAO), the data management function is responsible for corporate data and its use. This includes:

• Ensuring high-quality, trustworthy data is available for AI 
• Providing data in understandable forms to the wider business
• Delivering compliance,governance and security
• Maximizing data value by widening consumption

The data team brings together a range of skills and roles. As well as CDOs leading the program, data product owners create, monitor and improve data products, while operational roles including data analysts and data stewards are responsible for preparing, governing and administering data products and other data.

The business perspective

Across every sector, business leaders understand the central importance of harnessing their data to compete effectively. Access to relevant, consumable data products is critical to:

• Meeting organizational objectives around performance, efficiency, and decision-making
• Scaling AI and delivering its promised benefits
• Creating an agile, flexible organization that can react quickly to changing business conditions

The business perspective on data, and data products, stretches across the organization. Senior leaders focus on how data can meet business objectives, while business sponsors and analysts translate this into specific data products. Employees then access these products as part of their working lives, operationalizing data use to drive improved performance.

The IT perspective

Led by the CIO, the IT department is responsible for the overall management of the technology infrastructure. Responsibilities include:

• Supporting current and future business needs
• Ensuring organizational IT security and standards
• Delivering the right levels of technology performance, scaling to meet demand
• Operating efficiently, especially through increased automation 
• Monitoring and improving technology usage and performance

The IT team is tasked with managing the technology environment behind data products, integrating them into the overall IT infrastructure, and ensuring security, performance, and scalability. Based on business needs, the CIO sets the overall strategy, direction, and architecture for the technology function, with ultimate responsibility for its success. Roles in the IT team, such as architects, cloud engineers and data governance leads, manage performance day-to-day, including technology availability, integration and compliance. 

All three of these perspectives are supported by the data product marketplace. It acts as a central collaboration space around data, enabling its consumption and delivering value. The data product marketplace supports every team:

• Data management: Enables the seamless sharing, consumption and improvement of curated data products, meeting the key objective of maximizing data value
• Business: Connects employees and AI with the relevant, understandable data required to boost performance, improve decision-making and deliver on overall business objectives
• IT: Integrates data into the overall technology infrastructure, ensuring security, compliance, and performance on an ongoing basis    

Data products provide the shared language for collaboration between business, data and IT teams. Data product marketplaces are central to making data products widely available and understandable, driving their consumption and ongoing management. This means that the data product marketplace is not just another tool in the data stack. It is a strategic enabler that acts as a point of organizational convergence, a driver for collaboration, a foundation for AI and a practical way to turn data into business value and measure its impact through KPIs. It is therefore essential to operationalizing data product strategy and maximizing consumption to benefit the entire organization.

Learn more about the roles and structures needed to maximize data product consumption in our in-depth ebook. Download your copy here.