Breaking the Cycle of Ad-Hoc Chaos: How Noga Empowers Data Teams and PMs to Thrive

Sarah and Mark

Sarah, a data scientist at a large fintech enterprise, has her hands full. She’s juggling three high-stakes projects, each at different stages of development. After a productive morning optimizing a new model, Sarah is ready to dive into the next task on her roadmap. Just as she’s gaining momentum, her inbox pings—another request from a Product Manager (PM).

The PM, Mark, needs her to revisit a model she worked on six months ago. It’s urgent: he wants to know how the model would react if they added data from a new market, Canada. He also wonders if removing one of the existing features would boost the model's accuracy. For Mark, it’s a seemingly simple request—after all, it’s just a “small change.”

However, for Sarah, it’s not simple at all. She now has to put her current work on hold, dig into old notebooks, find the right version of the model, trace back through datasets, and re-run experiments. The deeper she dives, the more details she remembers needing updates or adjustments. A one-hour request turns into a full day, potentially even longer. Her momentum is lost, her timeline for the current project is disrupted, and she’s frustrated.

On the other side, Mark is equally frustrated. All he wants is a quick answer to help make an important business decision. But now he’s stuck waiting for Sarah to prioritize his request, knowing full well that he’s just one of many stakeholders in the queue. The lack of real-time data is stalling his progress, and delays are cascading through his team’s deliverables. Both Sarah and Mark are caught in a cycle of inefficiency, and neither is satisfied.

The Pain of Ad-Hoc Requests

This scenario isn’t unique to Sarah and Mark—it’s a daily reality for countless data teams and product managers across industries. For data scientists, these ad-hoc requests create constant context-switching, breaking their focus and productivity. Studies show that every time an employee switches tasks, it can take up to 23 minutes to regain focus, and for technical roles like data science, this context-switching leads to significant loss in efficiency.

Meanwhile, PMs are left waiting, often in the dark about when their requests will be fulfilled. Their deliverables depend on insights from data teams, and every delay ripples into lost opportunities, slower decision-making, and missed revenue targets. Data science bottlenecks can lead to tension between technical and business teams, fostering frustration and eroding the relationship between the two functions.

In this scenario, nobody wins. Data scientists are overburdened, PMs are frustrated, and the organization as a whole suffers from inefficiency and lost momentum.

The Cost of Context Switching

According to a study by the American Psychological Association, multitasking, or context switching, can lead to a productivity loss of up to 40%. In data science, this is amplified by the complexity of revisiting projects, retracing steps, and recalibrating models. Gartner reports that data scientists spend only 60% of their time on actual development, with the remaining 40% split between maintenance, administrative work, and addressing ad-hoc requests. It’s clear that ad-hoc queries are a major drain on productivity.

The friction isn’t just a matter of inconvenience—it has financial implications too. Organizations can lose hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars in delayed product decisions, reduced efficiency, and longer time to market.

The Future: Enter Noga

I guess you saw this coming ;)

This is where Noga steps in. Data scientists can stay focused on their high-value work, and PMs no longer have to wait in line for their data requests to be fulfilled.

Noga is an AI-powered data scientist that autonomously manages past projects, models, and experiments. Noga connects seamlessly across the entire tech stack—from Tableau dashboards to microservices, project code, and notebooks—allowing it to run simulations and make changes within the company’s environment, staying fully aligned with existing workflows.

Once a project is under Noga’s management, it retains the full context of the model, including data, features, version history, and all the decisions made along the way. Noga isn’t just a static system—it continuously learns and evolves with the project, so it's always up to date.

PMs Empowered to Self-Explore, with Guardrails in Place

With Noga, PMs like Mark no longer need to rely on Sarah to revisit a project. They can self-explore. Mark can ask Noga, “What if we add Canada to the model?” or “What happens if we remove a feature?” Noga will autonomously assess the request, analyze the potential changes needed, and prepare everything for Sarah's validation.

Not all requests will be executed immediately. Some require human oversight. Noga performs an automated assessment of the complexity—if a request requires substantial changes to the underlying code or model structure, it will streamline the process and place everything in front of the data scientist for review and approval. This ensures Sarah only steps in when necessary, with all relevant information prepared, minimizing her workload while securing the accuracy and integrity of the project.

For Sarah, this means no more context-switching. She can focus entirely on the new projects at hand, knowing that Noga is autonomously handling the requests related to her past work and only involving her when essential. And for Mark, this means real-time, actionable insights that allow him to make faster, smarter business decisions. No waiting, no frustration—just data-driven answers when he needs them, with proper safeguards in place.

The Road Ahead

The future of data science lies in automation and empowerment. With Noga, companies no longer have to compromise between efficiency and insight. Data scientists can stay laser-focused on creating value, while PMs gain the autonomy to explore data and get the answers they need, when they need them—with built-in checks and balances.

By breaking the cycle of ad-hoc chaos, Noga unlocks a new level of productivity for both technical and business teams. It’s time to free your data scientists from the grind of context-switching and give your PMs the power to self-explore their data. It’s time to embrace the future with Noga.

Interested in learning more about how Noga can transform your organization? Feel free to comment or reach out to us directly—we’d love to show you how we’re shaping the future of data science and project management.