How every organization can apply product thinking
Case study on Datank, offering Machine Learning as a service
Traditionally we think about a “product” as a physical or digital thing; an iPhone, an app, a sofa. When developing and launching these types of products, the need for product thinking is clear: someone must take day-to-day responsibility for the product vision and strategy, manage updates and releases, and balance priorities between customers, technology, and the business.
But what is a “product”, anyway? And what if a new way of thinking about “product” allowed you to bring powerful product thinking to a far broader range of challenges, from nonprofits to service businesses, even to government?
A more powerful definition of product: Your product is how you make change happen in the world.
By thinking of your impact on the world as a “product”, you gain access to the same set of tools that product leaders use to achieve their product vision: hypothesis-driven measurement and iteration, clear and compelling product vision and strategy, and a cross-functional roadmap that brings the team together. This way of building “product” is not a one-time effort; it’s a job that requires building repeatable, tuneable models to maximize your impact and achieve your vision.
Radical Product is a methodology for spreading product thinking throughout your organization, in a similar way that Lean and Agile have provided a clear methodology for feedback-driven execution. The free and open-source Radical Product Toolkit helps leaders craft a clear vision and strategy and translate that into roadmapping, execution, and measurement.
Datank is a company offering Machine Learning as a service. They are applying Radical Product thinking to scale how they’re creating change in the world by building a repeatable model for service delivery. We met Datank’s CEO, Eduardo Blanco, and Product Manager, Sandra Bermudez, when we were speaking at O’Reilly’s AI Conference in New York. We were impressed at how they were applying product thinking in a services organization and asked them a few questions:
What is Datank?
Datank was founded in Mexico City in 2016 with the mission to empower enterprises in addressing their core business challenges with rigorous Data Science. In order to accomplish our vision, we apply Design Thinking to understand the problem our customers are trying to solve, and offer Machine Learning as a service, co-building ML models with our customers — they bring their industry expertise, we provide the Data Science.
Currently we work with medium-size companies in Mexico from different industries: finance, retail, utilities and agriculture. We provide them with data solutions that enable them to intelligently automate massive decisions and strengthen their transition into data-driven enterprises.
How did you make the cognitive shift to product thinking even though you’re a services company?
Data Science is typically a core competency for our customers. So Datank needed to create a transformative experience for our customers, making it easier for them to outsource Data Science. We wanted to offer our customers a complete experience, from the moment they contacted us, through the process of developing and deploying Machine Learning solutions with them. Our product thinking fell into two categories:
- Customer experience: To create repeatability around the customer experience around understanding their vision for the product, the problem they’re trying to solve and guiding them throughout the process of developing and deploying Machine Learning solutions
- Development: To add repeatability to our development, we built Julieta, a platform to accelerate the development of Machine Learning models, automating data quality tasks with proprietary technology.
What were some challenges? How are you applying Radical Product thinking at Datank?
In building Julieta, the toughest challenge has been the definition of the product vision — without a clear product vision for Julieta, it would be hard to dedicate resources to it since client priorities would take over. So we used the Radical Vision Worksheet to create the “source code” of our vision for Julieta.
In working with our customers, we found the Radical Product Toolkit as an instrument that enabled us to prompt the right conversations among business CXOs, technical leads and the product team. With Radical Product thinking as a common ground, we’ve been able to share a vocabulary and express our concerns and expectations.
The exercise of filling in the blanks from the vision worksheet forced us to dig into the right questions and keep the focus on the user perspective, where the real value lies: Who’s our customer? What are they trying to achieve? What’s the world we envision for them?
This helps us agree on an aligned vision backed by the founders and shared by all the collaborators across the company, consolidating every conversation and decision around the customer perspective and serving all the stakeholders across the value chain.
After developing a Human-Centered vision, we build an RDCL strategy.
Our customers’ ML needs are often complex, with technical constraints and a sensitive regulatory framework. The Sustainability analysis helps us evaluate existential risks to the customer’s product from multiple perspectives. We also use the Sustainability analysis internally for prioritization — as a startup is very important for us to balance achieving the vision while mitigating risks for Datank.
Currently, every product initiative is framed as in the “Execute and Measure” worksheet. At the product team, before starting any effort we define the metrics, hypothesis and tasks. Also, we link it to our Scrum planning and service blueprint strategy.
We’ve found the Radical Product Toolkit very useful not only to converge into a product vision but to transform that vision into a design project.
A big thanks to the Datank team for sharing how they are using Radical Product thinking in their organization and with their clients.
Share your experiences as you use the the free and open source Radical Product toolkit to bring Radical Product thinking into your organization. We look forward to hearing from you!
