The Need
Datacom had no fit-for-purpose way to deploy or showcase internally built AI tools. Discovery surfaced three compounding problems:
- No publish path — useful AI tools sat on hard drives or in siloed repos, never shared, causing teams to duplicate effort
- No context — apps lacked documentation, so users couldn’t evaluate them and app-owners became informal helpdesks
- Poor discoverability — a survey of 3,700+ staff found 25% hadn’t used any AI tooling in the past week; most who did gained little value because they couldn’t find the right tools
The Solution
Product Hub is Datacom’s internal platform for discovering, deploying, and publishing AI micro-apps — with a path to external productisation.
Three solutions map directly to the problems:
- Deployment — a guided publish flow with AI-assisted refactoring and security review
- Clarity — AI-generated app pages so users instantly understand what a tool does and who it’s for
- Discoverability — a single source of truth for finding and accessing AI tools across the organisation
Customer segments: App-Creators (citizen developers), App-Users (internal staff), and Datacom Partners (future external customers).
Approach
As BA on an industry placement, I owned three phases:
- Lean Discovery — stakeholder interviews and process mapping to identify root causes behind low adoption
- Requirements — produced a PRD with use case, business requirements, and user stories; defined customer segments to anchor delivery
- Agile Delivery — maintained the backlog, ran sprint ceremonies, and produced a phased roadmap: Phase 1 (discoverability for App-Users), Phase 2 (deployment pipeline for App-Creators)
Value Delivered
- Phase 1 delivered to UAT-ready state
- Phased roadmap from internal discovery through to external productisation
- 25% of staff identified as direct enablement opportunity; 4–8 hrs/week savings within reach with better tool access
- Business and technical stakeholders aligned on scope, segments, and delivery approach