From Data Assets to Data Products: How to Unlock Self-Service Analytics at Scale

In recent years, the concept of treating data as a product has emerged as a powerful approach to managing and democratizing data within organizations. This method addresses challenges associated with traditional data management by empowering employees to self-serve data and by creating a structured framework where specific individuals, known as data product owners or managers, are responsible for data sets. This approach ensures that data is accessible, understandable, and of high quality, with clear ownership and responsibility for maintaining data standards and metadata. By implementing data-as-a-product strategies, organizations can facilitate more effective self-service data usage, allowing various teams to publish and manage data sets autonomously, thereby removing bottlenecks typically associated with central data teams. Data contracts play a crucial role in supporting this model by providing enforceable, machine-and-human-readable specifications that define data ownership, structure, access, and quality standards. This shift from viewing data merely as an asset to treating it as a product facilitates a more holistic and scalable approach to data management, encouraging broader data utilization and innovation across the organization.