Data Quality

January 16, 2024

Happy Tuesday everyone! There is lots going on in the Cleveland Product scene, so let’s get to it!

Article of the Week

Our firm took on a large effort in 2023 to shed light on a topic that doesn’t get enough attention - Data as a Product. We interviewed over 170 people to learn more about how their organization use data, and our comprehensive study brought to light many challenges that organizations have when using data (feel free to download the study here).

One of the biggest topics we found in this study and during follow-up interviews is data quality. We Product people love data, so we like to use as much quantitative and qualitative data as possible when determining what features and capabilities to build. So we often partner with our data teams to extract, mine, and visualize this data. Unfortunately, the data we find is often of low quality, inaccessible, or needs massaging.

I recently read an article on TechTarget about data quality, and I found the following three aspects the most interesting:

  1. How to determine data quality - Is your data high quality? How do you know? The one test I do is ask the data practitioners on your team how much time they spend cleaning up the data. If they spend more than half their time cleaning up data - not modeling it, not visualizing it - then your data is not high-quality.

  2. Benefits of good data quality - When the team is confident in the quality of the data, they can focus more on making sound business decisions, respond more quickly to changing market dynamics, or engage more thoughtfully with customers.

  3. Emerging data quality challenges - With the proliferation of AI tools, data quality becomes even more important, so you need to focus on a strong governance process to ensure the sources you are using and the models you are building have high-quality data.

We Product people love to use data to make decisions, so hopefully your data is high-quality so that you are making the best decisions possible, as quickly as possible. Read more to see how to do that!

Product Jobs of the Week

The Product roles at Cleveland companies keep rolling in!

Upcoming Events

  • January 19th - Everything I need to know about Product I Learned in the Restaurant Industry

  • February 13th - Product Management in Practice - A Conversation with Matt LeMay

About the Author

My name is Shawn Leitner. I started the Cleveland Product networking group in 2017, which helps to connect Product professionals around Cleveland, providing them with a forum to network, learn, and share stories. For my day job, I'm a Product Consultant & Coach for Pathfinder Product and help clients implement strong Product practices so they can create products that their teams love building and their customers love using. Connect with me on LinkedIn or feel free to attend one of my events either virtually or in-person. Always up for meeting for a cup of coffee also!