Harvard Business Review: Closing the Data Gap in Product Development

The vast majority of executives believe too many product decisions are based primarily on intuition and experience. Business leaders crave more testing with customers and more detailed information about how products perform in the market. Decision-making processes and corporate structures aren’t helping matters. Most organizations still have hierarchical decision-making processes in rigidly structured organizations. A significant number of companies are planning to revamp their organizational structures and empower developments teams to make more product development decisions.

But one gap still needs to be filled: Business leaders say that their organizations need better data and analytics capabilities than they currently have. Without them, empowerment will lead to chaos and poor decisions. Through surveys and interviews, Harvard Business Review discusses how organizations are:

• Leveraging experimentation to bridge this data gap
• Making the development process more iterative while preserving quality checkpoints
• Planning radical changes to corporate structures and decision making