Category: Data Product Management

A 1,200-person SaaS company launched a 14-stakeholder data council with perfect governance docs. Six months later: 247 emails, two decisions. David Ohnstad dissects why most data councils become expensive theater instead of decision-making engines.

Most enterprise data products languish after launch despite heavy investment. David Ohnstad’s Q2 diagnostic surfaces the adoption failures hiding in your dashboards and analytics tools—and how to fix them before they become permanent.

Microsoft’s data council announcement sparked a wave of copycat initiatives. But most companies miss the critical difference between launching a data council and building one that actually drives decisions. Here’s what separates success from expensive theater.

When two teams define ‘closed deal’ differently, who owns the problem? David Ohnstad reveals how federated architectures shift accountability to product managers without giving them the authority to enforce data governance—and what to do about it.

Henkel’s data platform shipped perfectly on time and budget—yet nine months later, nobody trusted the reports. The problem wasn’t the data or design. It was an organizational structure that gave product managers accountability without authority.