The Analytics Lifecycle Toolkit

CHAPTER 10Analytics Product Management

Success is not delivering a feature; success is learning how to solve the customer's problem.

—Eric Ries, The Lean Startup

PROCESS OVERVIEW

Product management as applied to analytics is a sparsely covered topic and, in my opinion, reflects on the evolving maturity of analytics as a whole. The idea is that analytics data products (including requests, projects, and products) need to be managed as a “product of data science.” This concept was introduced in Chapter 5 when the five best practice areas were identified. The management of data products, processes, and teams is the focus of the analytics product management best practice.

In this chapter, the broad term analytics data product is used as a reference to all analytics deliverables—including ad-hoc requests and special projects. Throughout this book, an analytics data product is referred to as the deliverable of data science. Where appropriate, the term services is used when discussing how the analytics organization satisfies the needs of customers across the enterprise.

Product

Anything that can be offered to a market for attention, acquisition, use, or consumption that might satisfy a want or need (Kotler & Armstrong, 2010: 7).

Service

An activity or benefit that one party can offer to another that is essentially intangible and does not result in the ownership of anything (Kotler & Armstrong, 2010: 603) (Kotler, 1991).

Note, however, that many organizations treat analytics ...