Weeknotes 347
This week I did:
Getting wise to data
Did some work on our data strategy, or as I like to think if it, our wisdom strategy. Most data strategies seem to focus on getting the data right. I think that’s a small part in getting value from the data. The biggest, most difficult challenge with data is turning it into organisational wisdom, things everyone knows to be true because they are based on evidence. The DIKW model helps us think about how to achieve this. How we convert data into information, bridge the gap between codifiable information and tacit knowledge, and then create organisational wisdom is a big challenge. But that’s where the value is.
In the zone
Add a few more things to productmanagement.zone.
I read:
Data Protection and Digital Information Bill
I started reading the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill, which amends/replaces GDPR. One to watch in the future for when/if it comes into force and what changes it makes necessary for how we collect, process and use data in products.
Common transformation pitfalls
In this ProductTank Oslo talk, Marty Cagan, founder and partner at Silicon Valley Product Group shares his thoughts on common transformation pitfalls.
And I thought about
Architectural Decision Records
I’ve been thinking for a while about how we keep a log of changes to our products, what the change is expected to achieve, what impacts it might have. It almost needs to work like a blog for a product (a prodlog?) where anyone working on the product can post. It creates a dated, tagged, sequential, searchable log of work done on the product. Maybe Architectural Decision Records is an option for that.
Everything in one place
Conversations about data and information often revolve around the assumed solution of ‘everything in one place’. It’s always a bad idea and unattainable goal. Rather than making things easier to find, it makes them harder to manage. Better to apply some twenty-first century Internet-y thinking to the problem. Creating a ‘digital trial’ that links between documents is a much better way for people to find files. Nobody needs to see everything, everyone needs to see what is relevant to them.
Communication
I thought about what it means to be good or bad at communication. And whether it’s always a double empathy problem; a breakdown in reciprocity and mutual understanding that can happen between people with very differing ways of experiencing the world. Maybe the answer is less about good communication and more about the illusion of good communication (which is often the solution applied to the double empathy problem).