Defining a Data Product and Managing its Lifecycle

The speaker defines a data product as a product management approach to data, regardless of whether it's at the table level, report level, or Excel spreadsheet level. They emphasize the importance of understanding that a data product will have a beginning, middle, and end, with the end being crucial to know when it has reached the end of its lifecycle and needs to be decommissioned. The speaker shares an example of a prior organization where multiple data dimension tables existed without clear differences, leading to confusion and potential data products floating out there forever.