ServiceNow Podcasts TAKEAWAYS - How are we over complicating data products? with Arielle Rolland
Dec 9, 2025
Arielle Rolland, a data & AI strategy manager and data product enthusiast, shares insights on simplifying data products. She highlights how large projects can complicate initiatives and emphasizes the need for a balance between strategy and delivery. Arielle discusses the pitfalls of overly agile methods that ignore essential groundwork like governance. She also contrasts technical and analytical data products, and advocates for using AI to streamline product management tasks. Her focus on maturing and retiring data products ensures they deliver real business value.
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Start Small, Build Real Foundations
- Large data product programs often fail because teams overcomplicate and scale too fast.
- Arielle Rolland says starting small and building foundations yields more business value than pure agility.
The Data Product Factory That Missed Value
- Arielle describes building a 'data product factory' that scaled without delivering expected value.
- That experience taught her to favor small, foundational starts over broad agile feature pushes.
Invest In People, Governance, And Metadata
- Invest time in enablement, governance, metadata, and collaboration before shipping features.
- Do not rely on a pure agile feature factory; plan for people, roles, and expectations up front.