Structured and Targeted Communication as an Enabler for Sustainable Data Science Projects

In the modern, highly digitized world, the use of data plays an increasingly important role. In order to extract information from data and create value, data products must be created and developed. In the field of sustainability, for example, in the smart city context, it can also be observed that Data Science is becoming more and more central. There is a need for data scientists and stakeholders to actively collaborate to create valuable data products based primarily on the data. In general, it is the job of data scientists to develop the data product and the job of decision-makers to use the data product to support decisions. Therefore, effective communication between data scientists and stakeholders is a crucial success factor in data science projects. Communication problems can occur at the interface between data scientists and stakeholders. To date, there is no approach to implement and facilitate efficient communication processes between data scientists and stakeholders. This chapter presents an approach for efficient communication processes between stakeholders and data scientists called the Data Product Profile. The concept was developed based on existing literature and expert interviews and evaluated with practitioners.