PRODUCTHEAD is a regular newsletter of product management goodness,
curated by Jock Busuttil.
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tl;dr
Product ops is an enabling function that streamlines the logistics of product management
It is particularly valuable in larger organisations with fragmented product practices
Product ops is just as focused on context as product management is
hello
The purpose of product ops is to free up product managers to focus more on the core role (thinking strategically, acting tactically and taking informed decisions to achieve product success). With an increasingly sophisticated approach to product management comes more preparatory work, more systems to interact with, and more people to keep informed.
When organisations are small, it’s reasonable for product managers to roll up their sleeves and get all this done. As product organisations grow and mature, inefficiency starts to creep in: manual data gathering and reporting, increasingly complicated logistics to meet and communicate with the right people, inconsistency of approach and form of communication from product manager to product manager, more and more context switching.
It’s not long before product managers are spending all their time gathering and communicating information rather acting upon it. As everyone tries to cram in more of the prep work to maintain any semblance of forward motion, burn-out looms large. Enter product ops to take on some of that load.
What is product operations? #
Product operations (or product ops, or ProdOps) answers the question of how to operate great product management in a larger organisation as efficiently as possible. Sometimes this means encouraging consistency of approach, creating or obtaining better tooling, and often automating repetitive processes (such as pulling the monthly metrics) that shouldn’t require a person to do manually.
How do product teams ensure senior leadership have the information they need about products without them having to dig around for it?
Who are the right people to come along to cross-functional product reviews?
Product ops is about lifting the veil on the process of creating products, and being transparent on progress and performance, and ensuring the right audiences have access to the right information.
Product ops strives for consistency and repeatability of the product management approach. It’s typically a proactive, lean team (1-10 people, not dozens) that seeks to multiply efficiency through shared services, tooling and practices. They are enablers for the product teams, helping them to increase the speed and quality of product management decision-making. They should report directly to the CPO or equivalent.
The 3 pillars of product ops #
According to Melissa Perri and Denise Tilles in their new book, Product Operations, product ops has 3 main pillars:
1. Business data & insights #
This is all about gathering the information on how the product, company, competitors are doing in the market, and performing financially. This typically involves accessing, extracting, connecting and segmenting existing sources of data from around the business. (To me this can sometimes feel a bit like Indiana Jones diving deeper into the innards of an ancient structure, avoiding traps along the way to find the treasure at the heart.)
It also means monitoring the health and financial performance of the products and automating the process of reporting metrics for easily repeatable and consistent, comparable insights. This benefits not just product managers, who seek to use all this data to inform their decisions, but also senior leaders who want a consistent definition and reporting methodology in order to compare apples with apples.
An anti-pattern I once encountered was where every department head on a senior leadership team defined profit margin differently, partly to suit each of their teams’ needs. Until somebody implemented a standard definition of profit, and a simple way to query it for all the products and services sold, it was almost impossible to have a sensible conversation about it.
2. Customer & market insights #
This is about gathering, collating and analysing more efficiently the qualitative and quantitative research and data that typically originates from outside of the organisation. Sometimes this can manifest as research ops, but the goal remains the same: to enable both user researchers and product managers to conduct user research more effectively. It’s not about taking user research away from user researchers.
Again, this is about streamlining the associated logistics and processes to allow product managers and user researchers to spend more on the higher value tasks of analysing the trends and insights, and sharing the findings transparently to the right audiences across the organisation. Product ops or research ops can also smooth the path to gathering user research when access to users and customers and the topics you’re allowed to discuss with them is subject to regulatory or legal constraints.
3. Shared processes & practices for building products #
This is about how effectively, consistently and transparently the various product teams build product and communicate about product. The goal here is to avoid each team reinventing the wheel with processes, systems and tooling by offering a more straightforward approach in keeping with teams’ needs. The organisation doesn’t need 10 different formats of product roadmap, for example. At scale, this would start to add up to a lot of unnecessary extra effort. But as the saying goes: be consistent, not uniform — some variation may be needed, but broadly aiming for a consistent approach to product management across the board.
It’s not just a one-and-done roll-out. It’s also about coaching teams and ongoing re-evaluation of whether those processes, systems and tooling are fit for purpose in a constantly evolving context, and about anticipating product people’s needs. Melissa and Denise describe it as building products for the product teams to help them work more efficiently.
This pillar in particular requires higher emotional intelligence. A good product ops person understands the underlying tensions and opportunities, and can work to overcome possible resistance to adopt consistent, efficient processes and practices.
What product ops is not #
Product ops is not a way for product managers to offload decision-making or overall responsibility for the product. Strategy, vision, prioritising, trade-offs, stakeholder management, deciding on the go-to-market approach and market positioning all still sit squarely with the product manager (or should do).
Nor is product ops a land grab from user research, product marketing or customer success teams. If product ops is working well, each of these teams stands to benefit. Lastly, product ops are not project managers. They are enablers helping to remove obstacles, and means responsive and thoughtful adaptation of process, not rigid enforcement.
Where to start with product ops #
Melissa and Denise’s advice is to start with one person. To begin with, focus on someone with the skills associated with the most important to you of the three pillars (and ideally the others also). As product ops is a relatively new discipline, you may not always find someone with that job title in their previous roles. The authors suggest that existing product people with a particular interest and aptitude in enhancing product process can be a good fit for this role also.
For you this week #
Melissa Perri and Denise Tilles featured on Lenny’s Podcast recently. Between the three of them, they quickly build up a picture of what good product ops can look like, situations when it’s more helpful, and how to get started. I love that Lenny starts off ‘concerned’ that product ops somehow diminishes the role of product manager, but quickly comes round to the benefits of delegating the ‘busy work’ to people better equipped to get it done.
Melissa and Denise also call out Blake Samic as a pioneer of product ops at Uber, Stripe and most recently OpenAI. I’ve also included for you this week Melissa interviewing Blake for her Product Thinking podcast.
Speak to you soon,
Jock
what to think about this week
Lenny’s Podcast with Melissa Perri & Denise Tilles
In today’s episode, they share insights, strategies, and real-world experiences to master all things product ops. We discuss:
- What exactly product operations is
- The three pillars of the product ops role
- The biggest benefits of adding product ops to your organization
- Which tasks product managers should offload to product ops and which they need to own
- How to help PMs embrace the value of product ops
- Examples of companies that have implemented product ops well
- Who and how to hire for this role
They literally wrote the book on product ops
[Lenny Rachitsky / Lenny’s Podcast]
Product ops masterclass with Blake Samic
In this episode of Product Thinking, Blake Samic, Former Global Head of Product Operations at Stripe, joins Melissa Perri to discuss the evolution and importance of product operations, the role of product ops in supporting product management teams, and the strategies employed to build successful teams and improve the product experience.
Advice from someone who’s been there, done that and got the t-shirt
[Melissa Perri / Product Thinking]
The key to great ProdOps? Relentlessly seeking context
What makes someone truly stand out in Product Operations (ProdOps)? It’s not just about being great at project management or building dashboards—those are table stakes. What sets a truly impactful ProdOps professional apart is their ability to seek out and truly understand context.
Deep context avoids bike shedding
[George Essilfie Jr. / LinkedIn]
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PRODUCTHEAD is a newsletter for product people of all varieties, and is lovingly crafted from enough fireworks to start a small war.