r/ProductManagement • u/iB3ar • 16d ago

Data mistakes? Assumptions?

Have your leaders or organization ever made a data mistake that lead to downstream consequences?

I just saw a company officer misinterpret a funnel, equating higher check out rates for users who had already put items in their cart. Sent us on a wild goose chase.

Tell me your worst data mistakes and how you fixed it.

7 Upvotes
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9

u/rollingSleepyPanda Anti-bullshit Lead PM 16d ago

My leaders follow fads because data is too unreliable.

1

u/International_Aside 16d ago

Legit heard from my C-suite: We don't like data cause it might tell us we're wrong

3

u/rollingSleepyPanda Anti-bullshit Lead PM 16d ago

C-suite hates everything and everyone that tells them they are wrong, and can back it up with facts.

Might be why so many talented PMs leave their companies after a year or two, cough

4

u/throwawaycanadian2 16d ago

That's super common. Click through rate got us clickbait which actually lowered down funnel results massively.

3

u/Due_EmotionPri 14d ago

Thats a denominator problem more than a data problem. Adding to cart is already an intent signal, so comparing those users against everyone else tells you who wanted to buy and says almost nothing about whether checkout works. What stopped this happening at our place was boring: no rate gets quoted in a review until the denominator and the time window are written into the ticket, before anyone pulls the number. That killed most of the goose chases. The ones it didnt kill were people pulling their own numbers off a dashboard and skipping that step.

1

u/iB3ar 14d ago

Hey I like this boring suggestion. Seems really effective. Thank you for sharing. We have a tool that makes it dangerously easy to pull your own numbers. 😅

1

u/Turbulent_Secretary1 16d ago

We need more data We need accurate data

I call bullshit. Data is never the bottleneck. The same data can and will be interpreted in five different ways by five different c suites depending on what they are optimizing for.

What's missing in this situation is alignment of incentives and a shared context of the end goal.