Viva the Authors of Data Products

This chapter was about the people in organizations who do the hard work of creating reports, presentations, and dashboards that communicate data. It is a common activity, but a role that is seldom identified explicitly or described with a set of skills and objectives. This chapter explained what it is to be an author of data products, and why this role is essential to the success of a data fluent organization. It is not just that these producers facilitate the flow of information between people. They also add tremendous value to the data they are communicating by analyzing, summarizing, structuring, storytelling, visualizing, and contextualizing.

It takes many diverse skills to be good at designing data products. Although some of these skills were mentioned, they were not described in sufficient depth to make you an expert. More than teaching skills, you were provided with guidance as to what matters the most in the process by focusing on the following...