CDO Magazine's Boston CDO Forum Explores Managing, Valuing Data as a Data Product

(US and Canada) Twenty-four chief data officers and senior data executives attended CDO Magazine’s "More Than Lunch" event hosted by the Boston CDO Forum at MassMutual on February 16, 2023.

A discussion on the topic "Managing & Valuing Data as a Data Product" was moderated by Savio Rodrigues, Strategic Clients/Sr. Client Partner,Trianz.

Panelists Jennifer McGhee, MFS Investment Management Vice President and Sr. Director of Data Strategy & Governance, and Kishore Aradhya, Stanley Black & Decker Senior Director, Data Engineering & Advanced Analytics, defined Data as a Product (DaaP), highlighting how DaaP plus Data Mesh plus Data Contracts — when combined — create a symbiotic framework for managing data. It’s a framework that allows for high-quality, decentralized data management.

The panelists also shared the following key considerations when developing DaaP:

• Understanding and Purpose: Who is the audience? What is valuable to them? What's the use case?

• Governance: Domain and organization-level governance standards and regulations; centralized vs. local guardrails; cascading governance and ownership.

• Domain: Who owns this data product? What's the authority model? Who are the primary consumers? Where do the SMEs reside?

• Service level: Discoverability, trustworthiness, availability, understandability, quality, currency, and performance.

According to the panelists, companies that treat data in this manner can reduce the time it takes to implement a new use case by as much as 90%, decreasing their total ownership costs (across technology, development, and maintenance) by up to 30% while reducing their risk and data governance burden.

“It was an amazing and successful event; very engaging!” says Raj Nimmagadda, Chief Data Officer of R&D (Global Head of RD Data Office) at Sanofi.