Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the last few years, you’ll have heard about product ops. In the early days of product ops, it might have seemed like a bit of a buzzword but now it’s become a core part of larger product functions, and an important area for product leaders to understand if they want to help their teams work in the most effective ways possible.

So, we sought out an expert on product ops to give us the lowdown on what it’s all about – Grant Hunter, Partner and COO at Product Growth Leaders. Grant kindly agreed to answer our key questions about product ops. Read on to find out what we learned.

What is Product Ops?

In our work with the Product Ops Alliance, a thought leadership peer group of product ops leaders, they defined Product Ops as responsible for continually evolving, optimizing, scaling, and supporting product management to enable better outcomes for the company, the product team, and each product professional.

Chris Butler put it nicely, Product Ops is product managing the product management experience.

And they identified five (5) pillars of Product Ops that could define what Product Ops does, even though not all of the members had all responsibility areas.

They are:

PEOPLE - We have the right people, with the right skills, in the right positions. [50% of our founding members say this is in their remit / 50% say some of this is in their remit]

PROCESS (though probably changing what we call it due to Marty’s article) - We have straightforward and well-defined processes that help guide product decisions and enable the organization. [60% of our founding members say this is in their remit / 40% say some of this is in their remit]

INSIGHT - We curate and provide access to insights and data (internally and externally) that help guide the right product decisions. [30% of our founding members say this is in their remit / 50% say some of this is in their remit]

TOOLS - We have the right tools and technology to allow the product team to be effective and productive. [70% of our founding members say this is in their remit / 30% say some of this is in their remit]

STAKEHOLDERS - We have alignment in process, deliverables, and expectations across the organization. [60% of our founding members say this is in their remit / 40% say some of this is in their remit]

People, Process and Stakeholders were clearly the three pillars that the members ranked the highest in terms of their strategic focus.

What is Product Ops NOT?

The first thing I will say it is not, is purely a continuation of our five pillars. Product Ops is not program or project management. Some of the founding members have ownership of Program/Project Management, but those that did say it is definitely not Product Ops.

I would go on to add two things that are not Product Ops.

First, Product Ops is not a gap-filler for the things product managers do not want to do. Too often we see Product Ops picking up tasks that others don’t want to do, similar to product manage’s picking up tasks other functions do not want to do.

Second, Product Ops is not the business interface. An article from the PLA called the role a business interface for Product Management, and in some cases, you see Product Ops performing product strategy. However, we see product management as a strategic role, and recommend product managers continue as the interface to the business.

Where/when did Product Ops originate from?

This is a great question. We see the concept arising from the rise of “Ops” roles in other departments. Sales, marketing, and development teams all have ops roles that help systemize the department as it grows.

As for when did it originate, I started reading about Product Ops in the summer of 2018 when, my now partner at Product Growth Leaders, Steve Johnson started writing about it. Melissa Perri included the concept in her book Escaping the Build Trap in late 2018, and the first Product Ops Summit from the PLA was in 2019.

With that said, Product Ops was around way before that. One of the founding members of the Product Ops Alliance shared a book her product leader gave her when she took the Product Operations title from 2008 (Software Product Operations by David Lundberg).

The reality is, Product Operations was happening at least since the mid-1990s when Pragmatic Marketing launched. Steve and I know many product leaders who used Practical Product Management and the Pragmatic Framework as the foundation to help create a common language and common artifacts. Each of us, after leaving Pragmatic, built businesses in the past 8 years helping companies achieve clarity of roles and standardization in product management.

How do you know if Product Ops is worth introducing to your company?

In a sense, once a product organization scales beyond one or two product managers, someone should be thinking about standardization of deliverables, language, and roles and responsibilities. At a company that size, it is most likely the head of product.

If you have multiple product managers working with shared stakeholders (business, design, development, marketing, sales, support, etc.), you should consider some level of product ops.

The Product Ops Alliance members identified the product roadmap as a common failure area. Multiple roadmap formats from different product managers create confusion among the executives and other stakeholders. Of course, standardized template make communication easier with all teams, something that Steve and I have focused on over the last decade.

The key question to ask to determine if it is worth introducing is, when can the efficiencies and reduced friction in the organization support the extra head (or heads)?

What makes a good Product Ops person?

A Product Ops person has to be able to identify the friction points in processes and deliverables, and be able to envision, or more likely facilitate discussion to determine, what better looks like. The goal isn't a theoretical ideal process as much as an optimal process. Some key attributes would be curiosity, empathy, problem-solving skills, soft-skills, stakeholder management. The same attributes as a good product manager. As I said earlier, Product Ops is really the product manager for product management.

I think that a more senior product manager, who is a student of the practice of product management can make a great Product Ops person. All but one of the Product Ops Alliance founding members came from a product management background.

How do you measure the success of a Product Ops team?

You have to measure it in the outcomes of the product management process, and in turn the outcomes of the company.

Whether that is an increased capacity due to reduced friction leading to more releases, a more objective prioritization process leading to a better hit rate on those releases, or some other part of the process getting better, Product Ops should improve product management, which should materialize in improved business results.

That being said, just like any strategic investment it takes time to see the full impact flow through to the business results.

For each Product Ops initiative, establish the OKRs. What does success look in the short-term? Perhaps that is stakeholder satisfaction with a new approach or artifact. What does success look like in the mid-term? Perhaps that is internal (increased velocity or a higher success rate), or external (increased usage or customer satisfaction). And, what does longer-term success look like? This should start moving to business results, like increased ARR, higher price points, or improved marketing and sales metrics.

What are good resources to learn more about Product Ops?

The first place I would point people to is the Product Ops Alliance work we are facilitating. You can read the article announcing what they are doing at https://bit.ly/introproductopsalliance. In that article are links to get access to the community and more.

The People working group is starting their work on Onboarding and Training, the Starting/Scaling Product Ops working group is starting with Standardizing Roadmaps, and the working group formerly known as Process is working on defining their first topic.

Note, at this time we are only allowing Product Operations people and product leaders who have responsibility for Product Ops into the peer group.

Steve Johnson wrote a seminal article at https://www.productgrowthleaders.com/post/adapt-best-practices-with-product-ops

The Product-Led Alliance has some really good articles (and some not as good ones) in their Product Ops Portal at https://productledalliance.com/product-ops-portal/.

And vendors like Pendo and Dragonboat have really helped support the growth of Product Ops. See https://www.pendo.io/resources/the-rise-of-product-ops-ebook/ and https://dragonboat.io/blog/product-operations-101/

As you read these articles and ebooks, remember that product ops teams make product management roles more effective with standardization and consistency. Product Ops doesn’t replace the need for product managers to guide strategy with market insights and data.

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