#219 Building Successful Product Practices Around Data with Booking.com’s Director of Data Science and Machine Learning, Sanchit Juneja.

This week on the Data Futurology podcast we speak to Sanchit Juneja, the Director of Data Science and Machine Learning at Booking.com. Having worked in roles across SE Asia and Africa before landing in his current role in the Netherlands, Juneja has a truly world view of the role of data in business, especially within the context of product development within large enterprises. One of the challenges that large enterprises face with product and data is the question of whether you should build or buy the tools that the organisation uses. As Juneja states, the ideal approach is a holistic one that does focus on speed to market. “You do still want to build things that are strategic and core to your heart,” he said. “However, having access to things that bring you faster to market is important at the end of the day, as you want to unlock business value.” Juneja then shares insights around the skills that it takes to work in product management. Compared with some other areas of data science, it is perhaps not quite as important to be technical (though being “tech aware” is essential). However, those in product management need to be very good at building consensus across the organisation, from executive right through to those that will implement solutions. They also need to be very comfortable with ambiguity and working with the unknown and have an appetite to learn on their feet. Finally, Juneja shares his insights around how he and his team track the value that they’re adding to the organisation. Critical in building alignment across the business is the ability to show results, so everyone working in product needs to be able to clearly articulate the gains there. For these insights, and many more in the wide-ranging interview with Juneja, tune into the podcast! Enjoy the show! Thank you to our sponsor, Talent Insights Group! Join us in Sydney for OpsWorld: https://www.datafuturology.com/opsworld Join our Slack Community: https://join.slack.com/t/datafuturologycircle/shared_invite/zt-z19cq4eq-ET6O49o2uySgvQWjM6a5ng What we discussed: 00:00 Introduction 03:31 What is the main focus of your role on booking.com? 07:42 How have you found getting the stakeholders and team members on board for the journey? 09:08 How do you define the product work in in our space? 11:57 What are some of the other skills that you see as key for the product manager role? 13:28 How do you make the trade-off decisions around the product as you're implementing or building towards the vision? What are what are some of the trade-offs that need to be done in the in the product decisions? 14:30 What is the mindset shift that that you would recommend for people that may be doing ad hoc pieces of work, or a one off? 16:07 What are you most proud of? 17:14 What are some things that you would have done differently? Quotes: · Even if you're a big tech org, you don't necessarily need to build everything yourself. So the build versus buy call is something that is personally on top of your mind, if you're a product leader. There are so many things that are happening, so many core things that if you go on and build it inside your house, it will take you the next six months. But if you just buy a tool outside in the industry, it will be much quicker for you. I think that is one thing that is always on top of your mind, what to build versus build to buy.