In this episode, we'll chat with Carly Taylor, Field CTO of Gaming at Databricks, to explore the fascinating world of data analytics in the gaming industry, where every click, quest, and respawn generates insights that shape the games we love. Carly shares her experience working in gaming to help harness data for better gameplay and smarter monetization. She'll break down what analysts, data scientists, and sales engineers actually do in gaming and how teams turn raw data into real-time decisions. Whether you're a player, a data nerd, or someone who wants to turn both into a career, this episode is your walkthrough guide to data in gaming. What You'll Learn: How gaming companies use data to optimize player experience and business outcomes  What it's like to work in a field engineering or customer-facing analyst role The tools, KPIs, and best practices for success How to break into a data role in gaming and what skills to focus on   Stay updated with Carly's latest by subscribing to her Substack   Register for free to be part of the next live session: https://bit.ly/3XB3A8b   Follow us on Socials: LinkedIn YouTube Instagram (Mavens of Data) Instagram (Maven Analytics) TikTok Facebook Medium X/Twitter

Todd Olson joins me to talk about making analytics worth paying for and relevant in the age of AI. The CEO of Pendo, an analytics SAAS company, Todd shares how the company evolved to support a wider audience by simplifying dashboards, removing user roadblocks, and leveraging AI to both generate and explain insights. We also talked about the roles of product management at Pendo. Todd views AI product management as a natural evolution for adaptable teams and explains how he thinks about hiring product roles in 2025. Todd also shares how he thinks about successful user adoption of his product around “time to value” and “stickiness” over vanity metrics like time spent. 

Highlights/ Skip to:

How Todd has addressed analytics apathy over the past decade at Pendo (1:17) Getting back to basics and not barraging people with more data and power (4:02) Pendo’s strategy for keeping the product experience simple without abandoning power users (6:44) Whether Todd is considering using an LLM (prompt-based) answer-driven experience with Pendo's UI (8:51) What Pendo looks for when hiring product managers right now, and why (14:58) How Pendo evaluates AI product managers, specifically (19:14) How Todd Olson views AI product management compared to traditional software product management (21:56) Todd’s concerns about the probabilistic nature of AI-generated answers in the product UX (27:51) What KPIs Todd uses to know whether Pendo is doing enough to reach its goals (32:49)   Why being able to tell what answers are best will become more important as choice increases (40:05)

Quotes from Today’s Episode

“Let’s go back to classic Geoffrey Moore Crossing the Chasm, you’re selling to early adopters. And what you’re doing is you’re relying on the early adopters’ skill set and figuring out how to take this data and connect it to business problems. So, in the early days, we didn’t do anything because the market we were selling to was very, very savvy; they’re hungry people, they just like new things. They’re getting data, they’re feeling really, really smart, everything’s working great. As you get bigger and bigger and bigger, you start to try to sell to a bigger TAM, a bigger audience, you start trying to talk to the these early majorities, which are, they’re not early adopters, they’re more technology laggards in some degree, and they don’t understand how to use data to inform their job. They’ve never used data to inform their job. There, we’ve had to do a lot more work.” Todd (2:04 - 2:58) “I think AI is amazing, and I don’t want to say AI is overhyped because AI in general is—yeah, it’s the revolution that we all have to pay attention to. Do I think that the skills necessary to be an AI product manager are so distinct that you need to hire differently? No, I don’t. That’s not what I’m seeing. If you have a really curious product manager who’s going all in, I think you’re going to be okay. Some of the most AI-forward work happening at Pendo is not just product management. Our design team is going crazy. And I think one of the things that we’re seeing is a blend between design and product, that they’re always adjacent and connected; there’s more sort of overlappiness now.” Todd (22:41 - 23:28) “I think about things like stickiness, which may not be an aggregate time, but how often are people coming back and checking in? And if you had this companion or this agent that you just could not live without, and it caused you to come into the product almost every day just to check in, but it’s a fast check-in, like, a five-minute check-in, a ten-minute check-in, that’s pretty darn sticky. That’s a good metric. So, I like stickiness as a metric because it’s measuring [things like], “Are you thinking about this product a lot?” And if you’re thinking about it a lot, and like, you can’t kind of live without it, you’re going to go to it a lot, even if it’s only a few minutes a day. Social media is like that. Thankfully I’m not addicted to TikTok or Instagram or anything like that, but I probably check it nearly every day. That’s a pretty good metric. It gets part of my process of any products that you’re checking every day is pretty darn good. So yeah, but I think we need to reframe the conversation not just total time. Like, how are we measuring outcomes and value, and I think that’s what’s ultimately going to win here.” Todd (39:57)

Links

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/toddaolson/  X: https://x.com/tolson  [email protected] 

Summary In this episode of the Data Engineering Podcast we welcome back Nick Schrock, CTO and founder of Dagster Labs, to discuss the evolving landscape of data engineering in the age of AI. As AI begins to impact data platforms and the role of data engineers, Nick shares his insights on how it will ultimately enhance productivity and expand software engineering's scope. He delves into the current state of AI adoption, the importance of maintaining core data engineering principles, and the need for human oversight when leveraging AI tools effectively. Nick also introduces Dagster's new components feature, designed to modularize and standardize data transformation processes, making it easier for teams to collaborate and integrate AI into their workflows. Join in to explore the future of data engineering, the potential for AI to abstract away complexity, and the importance of open standards in preventing walled gardens in the tech industry.

Announcements Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data managementThis episode is brought to you by Coresignal, your go-to source for high-quality public web data to power best-in-class AI products. Instead of spending time collecting, cleaning, and enriching data in-house, use ready-made multi-source B2B data that can be smoothly integrated into your systems via APIs or as datasets. With over 3 billion data records from 15+ online sources, Coresignal delivers high-quality data on companies, employees, and jobs. It is powering decision-making for more than 700 companies across AI, investment, HR tech, sales tech, and market intelligence industries. A founding member of the Ethical Web Data Collection Initiative, Coresignal stands out not only for its data quality but also for its commitment to responsible data collection practices. Recognized as the top data provider by Datarade for two consecutive years, Coresignal is the go-to partner for those who need fresh, accurate, and ethically sourced B2B data at scale. Discover how Coresignal's data can enhance your AI platforms. Visit dataengineeringpodcast.com/coresignal to start your free 14-day trial. Data migrations are brutal. They drag on for months—sometimes years—burning through resources and crushing team morale. Datafold's AI-powered Migration Agent changes all that. Their unique combination of AI code translation and automated data validation has helped companies complete migrations up to 10 times faster than manual approaches. And they're so confident in their solution, they'll actually guarantee your timeline in writing. Ready to turn your year-long migration into weeks? Visit dataengineeringpodcast.com/datafold today for the details. This is a pharmaceutical Ad for Soda Data Quality. Do you suffer from chronic dashboard distrust? Are broken pipelines and silent schema changes wreaking havoc on your analytics? You may be experiencing symptoms of Undiagnosed Data Quality Syndrome — also known as UDQS. Ask your data team about Soda. With Soda Metrics Observability, you can track the health of your KPIs and metrics across the business — automatically detecting anomalies before your CEO does. It’s 70% more accurate than industry benchmarks, and the fastest in the category, analyzing 1.1 billion rows in just 64 seconds. And with Collaborative Data Contracts, engineers and business can finally agree on what “done” looks like — so you can stop fighting over column names, and start trusting your data again.Whether you’re a data engineer, analytics lead, or just someone who cries when a dashboard flatlines, Soda may be right for you. Side effects of implementing Soda may include: Increased trust in your metrics, reduced late-night Slack emergencies, spontaneous high-fives across departments, fewer meetings and less back-and-forth with business stakeholders, and in rare cases, a newfound love of data. Sign up today to get a chance to win a $1000+ custom mechanical keyboard. Visit dataengineeringpodcast.com/soda to sign up and follow Soda’s launch week. It starts June 9th.Your host is Tobias Macey and today I'm interviewing Nick Schrock about lowering the barrier to entry for data platform consumersInterview IntroductionHow did you get involved in the area of data management?Can you start by giving your summary of the impact that the tidal wave of AI has had on data platforms and data teams?For anyone who hasn't heard of Dagster, can you give a quick summary of the project?What are the notable changes in the Dagster project in the past year?What are the ecosystem pressures that have shaped the ways that you think about the features and trajectory of Dagster as a project/product/community?In your recent release you introduced "components", which is a substantial change in how you enable teams to collaborate on data problems. What was the motivating factor in that work and how does it change the ways that organizations engage with their data?tension between being flexible and extensible vs. opinionated and constrainedincreased dependency on orchestration with LLM use casesreducing the barrier to contribution for data platform/pipelinesbringing application engineers into the mixchallenges of meeting users/teams where they are (languages, platform investments, etc.)What are the most interesting, innovative, or unexpected ways that you have seen teams applying the Components pattern?What are the most interesting, unexpected, or challenging lessons that you have learned while working on the latest iterations of Dagster?When is Dagster the wrong choice?What do you have planned for the future of Dagster?Contact Info LinkedInParting Question From your perspective, what is the biggest gap in the tooling or technology for data management today?Links Dagster+ EpisodeDagster Components Slide DeckThe Rise Of Medium CodeLakehouse ArchitectureIcebergDagster ComponentsPydantic ModelsKubernetesDagster PipesRuby on RailsdbtSlingFivetranTemporalMCP == Model Context ProtocolThe intro and outro music is from The Hug by The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA

Summary In this episode of the Data Engineering Podcast Alex Albu, tech lead for AI initiatives at Starburst, talks about integrating AI workloads with the lakehouse architecture. From his software engineering roots to leading data engineering efforts, Alex shares insights on enhancing Starburst's platform to support AI applications, including an AI agent for data exploration and using AI for metadata enrichment and workload optimization. He discusses the challenges of integrating AI with data systems, innovations like SQL functions for AI tasks and vector databases, and the limitations of traditional architectures in handling AI workloads. Alex also shares his vision for the future of Starburst, including support for new data formats and AI-driven data exploration tools.

Announcements Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data managementData migrations are brutal. They drag on for months—sometimes years—burning through resources and crushing team morale. Datafold's AI-powered Migration Agent changes all that. Their unique combination of AI code translation and automated data validation has helped companies complete migrations up to 10 times faster than manual approaches. And they're so confident in their solution, they'll actually guarantee your timeline in writing. Ready to turn your year-long migration into weeks? Visit dataengineeringpodcast.com/datafold today for the details.This is a pharmaceutical Ad for Soda Data Quality. Do you suffer from chronic dashboard distrust? Are broken pipelines and silent schema changes wreaking havoc on your analytics? You may be experiencing symptoms of Undiagnosed Data Quality Syndrome — also known as UDQS. Ask your data team about Soda. With Soda Metrics Observability, you can track the health of your KPIs and metrics across the business — automatically detecting anomalies before your CEO does. It’s 70% more accurate than industry benchmarks, and the fastest in the category, analyzing 1.1 billion rows in just 64 seconds. And with Collaborative Data Contracts, engineers and business can finally agree on what “done” looks like — so you can stop fighting over column names, and start trusting your data again.Whether you’re a data engineer, analytics lead, or just someone who cries when a dashboard flatlines, Soda may be right for you. Side effects of implementing Soda may include: Increased trust in your metrics, reduced late-night Slack emergencies, spontaneous high-fives across departments, fewer meetings and less back-and-forth with business stakeholders, and in rare cases, a newfound love of data. Sign up today to get a chance to win a $1000+ custom mechanical keyboard. Visit dataengineeringpodcast.com/soda to sign up and follow Soda’s launch week. It starts June 9th. This episode is brought to you by Coresignal, your go-to source for high-quality public web data to power best-in-class AI products. Instead of spending time collecting, cleaning, and enriching data in-house, use ready-made multi-source B2B data that can be smoothly integrated into your systems via APIs or as datasets. With over 3 billion data records from 15+ online sources, Coresignal delivers high-quality data on companies, employees, and jobs. It is powering decision-making for more than 700 companies across AI, investment, HR tech, sales tech, and market intelligence industries. A founding member of the Ethical Web Data Collection Initiative, Coresignal stands out not only for its data quality but also for its commitment to responsible data collection practices. Recognized as the top data provider by Datarade for two consecutive years, Coresignal is the go-to partner for those who need fresh, accurate, and ethically sourced B2B data at scale. Discover how Coresignal's data can enhance your AI platforms. Visit dataengineeringpodcast.com/coresignal to start your free 14-day trial.Your host is Tobias Macey and today I'm interviewing Alex Albu about how Starburst is extending the lakehouse to support AI workloadsInterview IntroductionHow did you get involved in the area of data management?Can you start by outlining the interaction points of AI with the types of data workflows that you are supporting with Starburst?What are some of the limitations of warehouse and lakehouse systems when it comes to supporting AI systems?What are the points of friction for engineers who are trying to employ LLMs in the work of maintaining a lakehouse environment?Methods such as tool use (exemplified by MCP) are a means of bolting on AI models to systems like Trino. What are some of the ways that is insufficient or cumbersome?Can you describe the technical implementation of the AI-oriented features that you have incorporated into the Starburst platform?What are the foundational architectural modifications that you had to make to enable those capabilities?For the vector storage and indexing, what modifications did you have to make to iceberg?What was your reasoning for not using a format like Lance?For teams who are using Starburst and your new AI features, what are some examples of the workflows that they can expect?What new capabilities are enabled by virtue of embedding AI features into the interface to the lakehouse?What are the most interesting, innovative, or unexpected ways that you have seen Starburst AI features used?What are the most interesting, unexpected, or challenging lessons that you have learned while working on AI features for Starburst?When is Starburst/lakehouse the wrong choice for a given AI use case?What do you have planned for the future of AI on Starburst?Contact Info LinkedInParting Question From your perspective, what is the biggest gap in the tooling or technology for data management today?Closing Announcements Thank you for listening! Don't forget to check out our other shows. Podcast.init covers the Python language, its community, and the innovative ways it is being used. The AI Engineering Podcast is your guide to the fast-moving world of building AI systems.Visit the site to subscribe to the show, sign up for the mailing list, and read the show notes.If you've learned something or tried out a project from the show then tell us about it! Email [email protected] with your story.Links StarburstPodcast EpisodeAWS AthenaMCP == Model Context ProtocolLLM Tool UseVector EmbeddingsRAG == Retrieval Augmented GenerationAI Engineering Podcast EpisodeStarburst Data ProductsLanceLanceDBParquetORCpgvectorStarburst IcehouseThe intro and outro music is from The Hug by The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA

Summary In this episode of the Data Engineering Podcast Mai-Lan Tomsen Bukovec, Vice President of Technology at AWS, talks about the evolution of Amazon S3 and its profound impact on data architecture. From her work on compute systems to leading the development and operations of S3, Mylan shares insights on how S3 has become a foundational element in modern data systems, enabling scalable and cost-effective data lakes since its launch alongside Hadoop in 2006. She discusses the architectural patterns enabled by S3, the importance of metadata in data management, and how S3's evolution has been driven by customer needs, leading to innovations like strong consistency and S3 tables.

Announcements Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data managementData migrations are brutal. They drag on for months—sometimes years—burning through resources and crushing team morale. Datafold's AI-powered Migration Agent changes all that. Their unique combination of AI code translation and automated data validation has helped companies complete migrations up to 10 times faster than manual approaches. And they're so confident in their solution, they'll actually guarantee your timeline in writing. Ready to turn your year-long migration into weeks? Visit dataengineeringpodcast.com/datafold today for the details.This is a pharmaceutical Ad for Soda Data Quality. Do you suffer from chronic dashboard distrust? Are broken pipelines and silent schema changes wreaking havoc on your analytics? You may be experiencing symptoms of Undiagnosed Data Quality Syndrome — also known as UDQS. Ask your data team about Soda. With Soda Metrics Observability, you can track the health of your KPIs and metrics across the business — automatically detecting anomalies before your CEO does. It’s 70% more accurate than industry benchmarks, and the fastest in the category, analyzing 1.1 billion rows in just 64 seconds. And with Collaborative Data Contracts, engineers and business can finally agree on what “done” looks like — so you can stop fighting over column names, and start trusting your data again.Whether you’re a data engineer, analytics lead, or just someone who cries when a dashboard flatlines, Soda may be right for you. Side effects of implementing Soda may include: Increased trust in your metrics, reduced late-night Slack emergencies, spontaneous high-fives across departments, fewer meetings and less back-and-forth with business stakeholders, and in rare cases, a newfound love of data. Sign up today to get a chance to win a $1000+ custom mechanical keyboard. Visit dataengineeringpodcast.com/soda to sign up and follow Soda’s launch week. It starts June 9th.Your host is Tobias Macey and today I'm interviewing Mai-Lan Tomsen Bukovec about the evolutions of S3 and how it has transformed data architectureInterview IntroductionHow did you get involved in the area of data management?Most everyone listening knows what S3 is, but can you start by giving a quick summary of what roles it plays in the data ecosystem?What are the major generational epochs in S3, with a particular focus on analytical/ML data systems?The first major driver of analytical usage for S3 was the Hadoop ecosystem. What are the other elements of the data ecosystem that helped shape the product direction of S3?Data storage and retrieval have been core primitives in computing since its inception. What are the characteristics of S3 and all of its copycats that led to such a difference in architectural patterns vs. other shared data technologies? (e.g. NFS, Gluster, Ceph, Samba, etc.)How does the unified pool of storage that is exemplified by S3 help to blur the boundaries between application data, analytical data, and ML/AI data?What are some of the default patterns for storage and retrieval across those three buckets that can lead to anti-patterns which add friction when trying to unify those use cases?The age of AI is leading to a massive potential for unlocking unstructured data, for which S3 has been a massive dumping ground over the years. How is that changing the ways that your customers think about the value of the assets that they have been hoarding for so long?What new architectural patterns is that generating?What are the most interesting, innovative, or unexpected ways that you have seen S3 used for analytical/ML/Ai applications?What are the most interesting, unexpected, or challenging lessons that you have learned while working on S3?When is S3 the wrong choice?What do you have planned for the future of S3?Contact Info LinkedInParting Question From your perspective, what is the biggest gap in the tooling or technology for data management today?Closing Announcements Thank you for listening! Don't forget to check out our other shows. Podcast.init covers the Python language, its community, and the innovative ways it is being used. The AI Engineering Podcast is your guide to the fast-moving world of building AI systems.Visit the site to subscribe to the show, sign up for the mailing list, and read the show notes.If you've learned something or tried out a project from the show then tell us about it! Email [email protected] with your story.Links AWS S3KinesisKafkaSQSEMRDrupalWordpressNetflix Blog on S3 as a Source of TruthHadoopMapReduceNasa JPLFINRA == Financial Industry Regulatory AuthorityS3 Object VersioningS3 Cross RegionS3 TablesIcebergParquetAWS KMSIceberg RESTDuckDBNFS == Network File SystemSambaGlusterFSCephMinIOS3 MetadataPhotoshop Generative FillAdobe FireflyTurbotax AI AssistantAWS Access AnalyzerData ProductsS3 Access PointAWS Nova ModelsLexisNexis ProtegeS3 Intelligent TieringS3 Principal Engineering TenetsThe intro and outro music is from The Hug by The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA

Summary In this episode of the Data Engineering Podcast Chakravarthy Kotaru talks about scaling data operations through standardized platform offerings. From his roots as an Oracle developer to leading the data platform at a major online travel company, Chakravarthy shares insights on managing diverse database technologies and providing databases as a service to streamline operations. He explains how his team has transitioned from DevOps to a platform engineering approach, centralizing expertise and automating repetitive tasks with AWS Service Catalog. Join them as they discuss the challenges of migrating legacy systems, integrating AI and ML for automation, and the importance of organizational buy-in in driving data platform success.

Announcements Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data managementData migrations are brutal. They drag on for months—sometimes years—burning through resources and crushing team morale. Datafold's AI-powered Migration Agent changes all that. Their unique combination of AI code translation and automated data validation has helped companies complete migrations up to 10 times faster than manual approaches. And they're so confident in their solution, they'll actually guarantee your timeline in writing. Ready to turn your year-long migration into weeks? Visit dataengineeringpodcast.com/datafold today for the details.This is a pharmaceutical Ad for Soda Data Quality. Do you suffer from chronic dashboard distrust? Are broken pipelines and silent schema changes wreaking havoc on your analytics? You may be experiencing symptoms of Undiagnosed Data Quality Syndrome — also known as UDQS. Ask your data team about Soda. With Soda Metrics Observability, you can track the health of your KPIs and metrics across the business — automatically detecting anomalies before your CEO does. It’s 70% more accurate than industry benchmarks, and the fastest in the category, analyzing 1.1 billion rows in just 64 seconds. And with Collaborative Data Contracts, engineers and business can finally agree on what “done” looks like — so you can stop fighting over column names, and start trusting your data again.Whether you’re a data engineer, analytics lead, or just someone who cries when a dashboard flatlines, Soda may be right for you. Side effects of implementing Soda may include: Increased trust in your metrics, reduced late-night Slack emergencies, spontaneous high-fives across departments, fewer meetings and less back-and-forth with business stakeholders, and in rare cases, a newfound love of data. Sign up today to get a chance to win a $1000+ custom mechanical keyboard. Visit dataengineeringpodcast.com/soda to sign up and follow Soda’s launch week. It starts June 9th.Your host is Tobias Macey and today I'm interviewing Chakri Kotaru about scaling successful data operations through standardized platform offeringsInterview IntroductionHow did you get involved in the area of data management?Can you start by outlining the different ways that you have seen teams you work with fail due to lack of structure and opinionated design?Why NoSQL?Pairing different styles of NoSQL for different problemsUseful patterns for each NoSQL style (document, column family, graph, etc.)Challenges in platform automation and scaling edge casesWhat challenges do you anticipate as a result of the new pressures as a result of AI applications?What are the most interesting, innovative, or unexpected ways that you have seen platform engineering practices applied to data systems?What are the most interesting, unexpected, or challenging lessons that you have learned while working on data platform engineering?When is NoSQL the wrong choice?What do you have planned for the future of platform principles for enabling data teams/data applications?Contact Info LinkedInParting Question From your perspective, what is the biggest gap in the tooling or technology for data management today?Closing Announcements Thank you for listening! Don't forget to check out our other shows. Podcast.init covers the Python language, its community, and the innovative ways it is being used. The AI Engineering Podcast is your guide to the fast-moving world of building AI systems.Visit the site to subscribe to the show, sign up for the mailing list, and read the show notes.If you've learned something or tried out a project from the show then tell us about it! Email [email protected] with your story.Links RiakDynamoDBSQL ServerCassandraScyllaDBCAP TheoremTerraformAWS Service CatalogBlog PostThe intro and outro music is from The Hug by The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA

Summary In this episode of the Data Engineering Podcast Lior Barak shares his insights on developing a three-year strategic vision for data management. He discusses the importance of having a strategic plan for data, highlighting the need for data teams to focus on impact rather than just enablement. He introduces the concept of a "data vision board" and explains how it can help organizations outline their strategic vision by considering three key forces: regulation, stakeholders, and organizational goals. Lior emphasizes the importance of balancing short-term pressures with long-term strategic goals, quantifying the cost of data issues to prioritize effectively, and maintaining the strategic vision as a living document through regular reviews. He encourages data teams to shift from being enablers to impact creators and provides practical advice on implementing a data vision board, setting clear KPIs, and embracing a product mindset to create tangible business impacts through strategic data management.

Announcements Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data managementIt’s 2024, why are we still doing data migrations by hand? Teams spend months—sometimes years—manually converting queries and validating data, burning resources and crushing morale. Datafold's AI-powered Migration Agent brings migrations into the modern era. Their unique combination of AI code translation and automated data validation has helped companies complete migrations up to 10 times faster than manual approaches. And they're so confident in their solution, they'll actually guarantee your timeline in writing. Ready to turn your year-long migration into weeks? Visit dataengineeringpodcast.com/datafold today to learn how Datafold can automate your migration and ensure source to target parity. Your host is Tobias Macey and today I'm interviewing Lior Barak about how to develop your three year strategic vision for dataInterview IntroductionHow did you get involved in the area of data management?Can you start by giving an outline of the types of problems that occur as a result of not developing a strategic plan for an organization's data systems?What is the format that you recommend for capturing that strategic vision?What are the types of decisions and details that you believe should be included in a vision statement?Why is a 3 year horizon beneficial? What does that scale of time encourage/discourage in the debate and decision-making process?Who are the personas that should be included in the process of developing this strategy document?Can you walk us through the steps and processes involved in developing the data vision board for an organization?What are the time-frames or milestones that should lead to revisiting and revising the strategic objectives?What are the most interesting, innovative, or unexpected ways that you have seen a data vision strategy used?What are the most interesting, unexpected, or challenging lessons that you have learned while working on data strategy development?When is a data vision board the wrong choice?What are some additional resources or practices that you recommend teams invest in as a supplement to this strategic vision exercise?Contact Info LinkedInSubstackParting Question From your perspective, what is the biggest gap in the tooling or technology for data management today?Closing Announcements Thank you for listening! Don't forget to check out our other shows. Podcast.init covers the Python language, its community, and the innovative ways it is being used. The AI Engineering Podcast is your guide to the fast-moving world of building AI systems.Visit the site to subscribe to the show, sign up for the mailing list, and read the show notes.If you've learned something or tried out a project from the show then tell us about it! Email [email protected] with your story.Links Vision Board OverviewEpisode 397: Defining A Strategy For Your Data ProductsMinto Pyramid PrincipleKPI == Key Performance IndicatorOKR == Objectives and Key ResultsPhil Jackson: Eleven Rings (affiliate link)The intro and outro music is from The Hug by The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA

KPIs? Really? It's 2024. Can't we just ask Claude to generate those for us? We say… no. There are lots and lots of things that AI can take on or streamline, but getting meaningful, outcome-oriented alignment within a set of business partners as they plan a campaign, project, or initiative isn't one of them! Or, at least, we're pretty sure that's what our special guest for this episode would say. He's been thinking about (and ranting about) organizations' failure to take goal establishment, KPI identification, and target-setting seriously enough for years (we found a post he wrote in 2009 on the subject!). He also really helped us earn our explicit tag for this episode — scatologically and onanistically, we're afraid. But solid content nonetheless, so hopefully you can hear past that! For complete show notes, including links to items mentioned in this episode and a transcript of the show, visit the show page.

The Data Product Management In Action podcast, brought to you by Soda and executive producer Scott Hirleman, is a platform for data product management practitioners to share insights and experiences. In Season 01, Episode 08, host Frannie Helforoush (Senior Digital Product Manager at RBC Global Asset Management) and guest Corrin Sholomo Goldenberg (Product Manager at Chainlink Labs), a practitioner with experience in both software product management and data product management, focus their conversation on building data platforms and teams from scratch. Their conversation also explores team dynamics and structure in product and data management. Takeaways include insights into KPIs and metrics to measure success, effective team structures, collaboration strategies, and the integration of diverse expertise.  About our host Frannie Helforoush: Frannie's journey began as a software engineer and evolved into a strategic product manager. Now, as a data product manager, she leverages her expertise in both fields to create impactful solutions. Frannie thrives on making data accessible and actionable, driving product innovation, and ensuring product thinking is integral to data management. Connect with Frannie on LinkedIn. About our guest Corrin Shlomo Goldenberg: Corrin is a data-driven product manager with nearly two decades of experience in the tech industry, that fuels the creation of impactful data products that make a real difference. Corrin is passionate about uncovering insights across diverse fields. Connect with Corrin on LinkedIn. All views and opinions expressed are those of the individuals and do not necessarily reflect their employers or anyone else. Join the conversation on LinkedIn. Apply to be a guest or nominate someone that you know. Do you love what you're listening to? Please rate and review the podcast, and share it with fellow practitioners you know. Your support helps us reach more listeners and continue providing valuable insights!

Today I’m joined by Marnix van de Stolpe, Product Owner at Coolblue in the area of data science. Throughout our conversation, Marnix shares the story of how he joined a data science team that was developing a solution that was too focused on the delivery of a data-science metric that was not on track to solve a clear customer problem. We discuss how Marnix came to the difficult decision to throw out 18 months of data science work, what it was like to switch to a human-centered, product approach, and the challenges that came with it. Marnix shares the impact this decision had on his team and the stakeholders involved, as well as the impact on his personal career and the advice he would give to others who find themselves in the same position. Marnix is also a Founding Member of the Data Product Leadership Community and will be going much more into the details and his experience live on Zoom on November 16 @ 2pm ET for members.

Highlights/ Skip to:

I introduce Marnix, Product Owner at Coolblue and one of the original members of the Data Product Leadership Community (00:35) Marnix describes what Coolblue does and his role there (01:20) Why and how Marnix decided to throw away 18 months of machine learning work (02:51) How Marnix determined that the KPI (metric) being created wasn’t enough to deliver a valuable product (07:56) Marnix describes the conversation with his data science team on mapping the solution back to the desired outcome (11:57) What the culture is like at Coolblue now when developing data products (17:17) Marnix’s advice for data product managers who are coming into an environment where existing work is not tied to a desired outcome (18:43) Marnix and I discuss why data literacy is not the solution to making more impactful data products (21:00) The impact that Marnix’s human-centered approach to data product development has had on the stakeholders at Coolblue (24:54) Marnix shares the ultimate outcome of the product his team was developing to measure product returns (31:05) How you can get in touch with Marnix (33:45)

Links Coolblue: https://www.coolblue.nl LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marnixvdstolpe/

Most of the time, we think of analytics as taking historical data for a business, munging it in various ways, and then using the results of that munging to make decisions. But, what if the business has no (or very little) historical data… because it's a startup? That's the situation venture capitalists — especially those focused on early stage startups — face constantly. We were curious as to how and where data and analytics play a role in such a world, and Sam Wong, a partner at Blackbird Ventures, joined Michael, Val, and Tim to explore the subject. Hypotheses and KPIs came up a lot, so our hypothesis that there was a relevant tie-in to the traditional focus of this show was validated, and, as a result, the valuation of the podcast itself tripled and we are accepting term sheets. For complete show notes, including links to items mentioned in this episode and a transcript of the show, visit the show page.

We talked about:

Polina's background How common it is for PhD students to build ML pipelines end-to-end Simultaneous PhD and industry experience Support from both the academic and industry sides How common the industrial PhD setup is and how to get into one Organizational trust theory How price relates to trust How trust relates to explainability The importance of actionability Explainability vs interpretability vs actionability Complex glass box models Does the explainability of a model follow explainability? What explainable AI bring to customers and end users Can all trust be turned into KPI?

Links:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/polina-mosolova/ Neural Additive Models paper: https://proceedings.neurips.cc/paper/2021/file/251bd0442dfcc53b5a761e050f8022b8-Paper.pdf Neural Basis Model paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2205.14120.pdf Interpretable Feature Spaces paper: https://kdd.org/exploration_files/vol24issue1_1._Interpretable_Feature_Spaces_revised.pdf

Today I’m chatting with Osian Jones, Head of Product for the Data Platform at Stuart. Osian describes how impact and ROI can be difficult metrics to measure in a data platform, and how the team at Stuart has sought to answer this challenge. He also reveals how user experience is intrinsically linked to adoption and the technical problems that data platforms seek to solve. Throughout our conversation, Osian shares a holistic overview of what it was like to design a data platform from scratch, the lessons he’s learned along the way, and the advice he’d give to other data product managers taking on similar projects. 

Highlights/ Skip to:

Osian describes his role at Stuart (01:36) Brian and Osian explore the importance of creating an intentional user experience strategy (04:29) Osian explains how having a clear mission enables him to create parameters to measure product success (11:44) How Stuart developed the KPIs for their data platform (17:09) Osian gives his take on the pros and cons of how data departments are handled in regards to company oversight (21:23) Brian and Osian discuss how vital it is to listen to your end users rather than relying on analytics alone to measure adoption (26:50) Osian reveals how he and his team went about designing their platform (31:33) What Osian learned from building out the platform and what he would change if he had to tackle a data product like this all over again (36:34)

Quotes from Today’s Episode “Analytics has been treated very much as a technical problem, and very much so on the data platform side, which is more on the infrastructure and the tooling to enable analytics to take place. And so, viewing that purely as a technical problem left us at odds in a way, compared to [teams that had] a product leader, where the user was the focus [and] the user experience was very much driving a lot of what was roadmap.” — Osian Jones (03:15)

“Whenever we get this question of what’s the impact? What’s the value? How does it impact our company top line? How does it impact our company OKRs? This is when we start to panic sometimes, as data platform leaders because that’s an answer that’s really challenging for us, simply because we are mostly enablers for analytics teams who are themselves enablers. It’s almost like there’s two different degrees away from the direct impact that your team can have.” — Osian Jones (12:45)

“We have to start with a very clear mission. And our mission is to empower everyone to make the best data-driven decisions as fast as possible. And so, hidden within there, that’s a function of reducing time to insight, it’s also about maximizing trust and obviously minimizing costs.” — Osian Jones (13:48)

“We can track [metrics like reliability, incidents, time to resolution, etc.], but also there is a perception aspect to that as well. We can’t underestimate the importance of listening to our users and qualitative data.” — Osian Jones (30:16)

“These were questions that I felt that I naturally had to ask myself as a product manager. … Understanding who our users are, what they are trying to do with data and what is the current state of our data platform—so those were the three main things that I really wanted to get to the heart of, and connecting those three things together.” – Osian Jones (35:29)

“The advice that I would give to anyone who is taking on the role of a leader of a data platform or a similar role is, you can easily get overwhelmed by just so many different use cases. And so, I would really encourage [leaders] to avoid that.” – Osian Jones (37:57)

“Really look at your data platform from an end-user perspective and almost think of it as if you were to put the data platform on a supermarket shelf, what would that look like? And so, for each of the different components, how would you market that in a single one-liner in terms of what can this do for me?” – Osian Jones (39:22)

Links Stuart: https://stuart.com/ Article on IIA: https://iianalytics.com/community/blog/how-to-build-a-data-platform-as-a-product-a-retrospective Experiencing Data Episode 80 with Doug Hubbard: https://designingforanalytics.com/resources/episodes/080-how-to-measure-the-impact-of-data-productsand-anything-else-with-forecasting-and-measurement-expert-doug-hubbard/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osianllwydjones/ Medium: https://medium.com/@osianllwyd

One of the toughest parts of any data project is experimentation, not just because you need to choose the right testing method to confirm the project’s effectiveness, but because you also need to make sure you are testing the right hypothesis and measuring the right KPIs to ensure you receive accurate results. One of the most effective methods for data experimentation is A/B testing, and Anjali Mehra, Senior Director of Product Analytics, Data Science, Experimentation, and Instrumentation at DocuSign, is no stranger to how A/B testing can impact multiple parts of any organization. Throughout her career, she has also worked in marketing analytics and customer analytics at companies like Shutterfly, Wayfair, and Constant Contact. Throughout the episode, we discuss DocuSign’s analytics goals, how A/B testing works, how to gamify data experimentation, how A/B testing helps with new initiative validation, examples of A/B testing with data projects, how organizations can get started with data experimentation, and much more.

We talked about:

Jekaterina’s background How Jekaterina started freelancing Jekaterina’s initial ways of getting freelancing clients How being a generalist helped Jekaterina’s career Connecting business and data How Jekaterina’s LinkedIn posts helped her get clients Jekaterina’s work in fundraising Cohorts and KPIs Improving communication between the data and business teams Motivating every link in the company’s chain The cons of freelancing Balancing projects and networking The importance of enjoying what you do Growing the client base In the office work vs working remotely Jekaterina’s advice who people who feel stuck Jekaterina’s resource recommendations

Links:

Jekaterina's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jekaterina-kokatjuhha/

Join DataTalks.Club: https://datatalks.club/slack.html

Data plays a vital role in helping companies develop a competitive advantage, but it's the data evangelist who gathers and leverages those insights to help organizations understand the story their data is telling them. Today, on Analytics on Fire, we discuss how to become a data evangelist with data storyteller, leader, and lifelong learner, Santosh Kanthethy. At the time of recording this episode, Santosh was the IT Technology Manager for NextEra Energy Resources. Now, he is Head of Data Analytics and the leader of a growing internal data visualization community at EverBright, a solar financing solutions company and a subsidiary of NextEra. Tuning in, you'll gain step-by-step instructions for becoming a rockstar data evangelist , including three things to consider before you get started. We also take a look at the top functions of an internal data visualization community, how to get your executive team on board, and how to overcome some of the challenges that data evangelists are likely to encounter along the way. For actionable insights into how to build a thriving community, transform data culture from the inside out, and more, make sure not to miss this episode!   In this episode, you'll learn: [06:16] More about NextEra, one of America's largest capital investors in infrastructure. [07:10] Defining what a data evangelist is and how the internal data visualization community at NextEra was born. [08:48] Why Santosh decided to nurture and grow this community and switch from IT to data. [09:55] What the game of cricket taught Santosh about being a team leader. [13:55] Three things to consider before becoming a data evangelist: the maturity of your organization, your curiosity, and your ability to create content. [19:16] How often the data community meets and some of the topics that come up. [20:50] The three core selling points of a data community for your company: consistency better decision making, and relevance. [24:19] Tips for obtaining essential executive buy-in and support. [26:52] Becoming tool-agnostic: how to evangelize the benefits of the practice, not the tool. [29:34] A look at membership and how to determine who joins your data community. [31:40] KPIs, WIGs, and OKRs to measure the success of your community. [34:13] How data evangelists can overcome resistance while building a community. [36:20] What percentage of technology budgets should be allocated to community, change management, and upskilling. [38:50] How Santosh is inspired by the people he interacts with on a daily basis. [0:43:21] How Santosh can help you visualize your fitness data from Garmin or Strava! For full show notes, and the links mentioned visit: https://bibrainz.com/podcast/89   Enjoyed the Show?  Please leave us a review on iTunes.

Today, I’m flying solo in order to introduce you to CED: my three-part UX framework for designing your ML / predictive / prescriptive analytics UI around trust, engagement, and indispensability. Why this, why now? I have had several people tell me that this has been incredibly helpful to them in designing useful, usable analytics tools and decision support applications. 

I have written about the CED framework before at the following link:

https://designingforanalytics.com/ced

There you will find an example of the framework put into a real-world context. In this episode, I wanted to add some extra color to what is discussed in the article. If you’re an individual contributor, the best part is that you don’t have to be a professional designer to begin applying this to your own data products. And for leaders of teams, you can use the ideas in CED as a “checklist” when trying to audit your team’s solutions in the design phase—before it’s too late or expensive to make meaningful changes to the solutions. 

CED is definitely easier to implement if you understand the basics of human-centered design, including research, problem finding and definition, journey mapping, consulting, and facilitation etc. If you need a step-by-step method to develop these foundational skills, my training program, Designing Human-Centered Data Products, might help. It comes in two formats: a Self-Guided Video Course and a bi-annual Instructor-Led Seminar.

Quotes from Today’s Episode “‘How do we visualize the data?’ is the wrong starting question for designing a useful decision support application. That makes all kinds of assumptions that we have the right information, that we know what the users' goals and downstream decisions are, and we know how our solution will make a positive change in the customer or users’ life.”- Brian (@rhythmspice) (02:07)

“The CED is a UX framework for designing analytics tools that drive decision-making. Three letters, three parts: Conclusions; C, Evidence: E, and Data: D. The tough pill for some technical leaders to swallow is that the application, tool or product they are making may need to present what I call a ‘conclusion’—or if you prefer, an ‘opinion.’ Why? Because many users do not want an ‘exploratory’ tool—even when they say they do. They often need an insight to start with, before exploration time  becomes valuable.” - Brian (@rhythmspice) (04:00)

“CED requires you to do customer and user research to understand what the meaningful changes, insights, and things that people want or need actually are. Well designed ‘Conclusions’—when experienced in an analytics tool using the CED framework—often manifest themselves as insights such as unexpected changes, confirmation of expected changes, meaningful change versus meaningful benchmarks, scoring how KPIs track to predefined and meaningful ranges, actionable recommendations, and next best actions. Sometimes these Conclusions are best experienced as charts and visualizations, but not always—and this is why visualizing the data rarely is the right place to begin designing the UX.” - Brian (@rhythmspice) (08:54)

“If I see another analytics tool that promises ‘actionable insights’ but is primarily experienced as a collection of gigantic data tables with 10, 20, or 30+ columns of data to parse, your design is almost certainly going to frustrate, if not alienate, your users. Not because all table UIs are bad, but because you’ve put a gigantic tool-time tax on the user, forcing them to derive what the meaningful conclusions should be.”   - Brian (@rhythmspice) (20:20)

Gordon Wong is on a mission. A long-time business intelligence leader who has led data & analytics teams at HubSpot and FitBit, Wong believes BI teams aren’t data-driven enough. He says BI leaders need to think of themselves as small businesses owners and aggressively court and manage customers. He says too many don’t have metrics to track customer engagement and usage. In short, BI teams need to eat their own dog food and build success metrics to guide their activities.

If you are a data or analytics leader, do you know the value your team contributes to the business? Do you have KPIs for business intelligence? Can you measure the impact of data and analytics endeavors in terms the business understands and respects? Too often BI and data leaders get caught up in technical details and fail to evaluate how their technical initiatives add value to the business. This wide-ranging interview with a BI veteran will shed light on how to run a successful BI shop.

How do we measure the performance of this podcast? With well-formulated KPIs, of course! With targets set for them. Since Tim is the taskmaster who insists we revisit our KPIs every year, we decided he would be our guest for this show, and Michael and Moe would take turns trying to stump him with impromptu role playing as difficult stakeholders in challenging scenarios. For complete show notes, including links to items mentioned in this episode and a transcript of the show, visit the show page.

One of our KPIs for the show is to keep the Topic Repeat Rate (TRR) below 1.2%. From carefully monitoring our show dashboard, we had an actionable insight: we could finally revisit episode #002. Conveniently, the topic of that show was dashboards, which explains the self-referential stemwinder of a description of this episode. That show was "a long, long time ago. We can still remember… when the dashboards used to make us smile." For complete show notes, including links to items mentioned in this episode and a transcript of the show, visit the show page.