Data products are not just datasets or APIs—they are reusable assets designed to deliver continuous business value. Managing them effectively throughout their lifecycle ensures organizations can maximize their potential, improving governance, discoverability, and usability. This article explores the key stages of the data product lifecycle and how Dawiso facilitates efficient data product management.
Ask ten data leaders what a data product is, and you’ll likely get ten different answers. The term is often used interchangeably with datasets, APIs, or platforms, but a true data product is more than just raw data or the technology behind it. It’s about who it serves and how it creates value.
Creating a data product means ensuring the right data assets reach the right users in the right way. This requires careful consideration of placement, packaging, and permissions:
At its core, a data product isn’t valuable because of the data itself—it’s valuable because of what people can do with it.
Data-driven enterprises have one thing in common: they build data products rather than one-off data projects. Data products are reusable assets designed to deliver continuous business value.
Every data product follows a lifecycle, similar to software development, allowing for iteration and improvement to meet business needs. The key stages include:
Stop with the theory…let’s take a look into the practice.
Dawiso provides a structured approach to managing data products throughout their lifecycle. The Data Products Catalog in Dawiso ensures that every data product is well-defined, properly documented, and easy to discover. Key management features include:
As a data owner, you are not just a custodian of information—you accept responsibility for ensuring the quality, reliability, and accessibility of your data products. This includes guaranteeing data accuracy, completeness, and compliance with governance policies. Whether it’s maintaining data freshness, upholding SLAs, or ensuring that business users can confidently rely on the data for decision-making, your role is central to creating trust in the data ecosystem.
Changing a data product’s workflow is not just about adjusting the phases of its lifecycle—it also involves defining who has the right to edit and influence it. Dawiso serves as a collaborative space where multiple stakeholders—data architects, governance professionals, and product owners—each play a role at different stages of the lifecycle. Whether it’s shaping the initial design, ensuring compliance, or maintaining its long-term value, everyone has something to contribute.
The products are linked by a contract outlining the details of their connections. We can access all or only some data product items. A data contract is a formal agreement or specification that defines how data is structured, communicated when data is exchanged, and guarantees source data quality.
We can also click on data contracts here below in the right panel. Both the input (draws from) and output (passes the data on) of this data product are displayed contracts.
In Dawiso, data contracts exist between individual data products and are documented like the products themselves.
By leveraging these management capabilities, Dawiso ensures that organizations can easily create, maintain, and govern their data products, fostering a scalable and self-service data ecosystem.
We have a predefined template in Dawiso. You can utilize a preconfigured workflow for data products, or we can adapt it to fit your existing framework. Both options are available.
Data Product templates help speed up the development process. These templates serve as blueprints for well-defined data products, including essential information such as the product's definition, ownership, data lineage, and service level agreements (SLAs).
Although we establish a solid foundation for documentation, the technical development and deployment of these products in other tools is your responsibility. With these templates, you can gain a head start in development and ensure that your data products are built on a strong foundation.
At the same time it is easy to customize. A one-size-fits-all approach doesn't always work for everyone. While data product templates provide a strong foundation, Dawiso empowers you with customization. Modify the templates as needed for your unique data product vision.
If you are more interested in the components of data products, check out the article.
Or you can click through the interactive tour yourself and read more about all the capabilities here.
Effective lifecycle management prevents data sprawl, improves data governance, and ensures that organizations derive real business value from their data. By using a structured platform like Dawiso, businesses can create reliable, reusable, and high-impact data products.
A well-managed data product doesn’t just store data—it delivers actionable insights, supports decision-making, and enhances collaboration across teams.
Want to see how it works in action? Explore Dawiso’s interactive tutorial on data product management here.
Keep reading and take a deeper dive into our most recent content on metadata management and beyond:
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