September 25

Getting to Grips with Product Operations

There seems to be a plethora of operations roles. You may have heard of sales ops, marketing ops, revenue ops, and dev ops. Now product management is getting into the operations game with product ops. But the rise of product ops is not happening just because all of the cool kids are doing it. These resources explain what product operations are and why you may want it in your organization.

What is product operations? The folks at Pendo define Product ops (short for product operations) as an operational function that optimizes the intersection of product, engineering, and customer success. It supports the R&D team and their go-to-market counterparts to improve alignment, communications, and processes around the product. Effective product ops teams accelerate feedback loops, increase efficiencies, and improve feature adoption.

(via @pendoio)

Why product operations is set to be the backbone of product-led growth. Similar to the emergence of design ops in the last five years, product operations fulfills a need to streamline a scaling function. It defines, communicates, supports, and improves important operations which can be standardized, such as communication, planning processes, team gatherings, and training. Jonathan Hau describes what product operations does, explains how it fits within product teams at his company InVision and shares some of his personal learnings over the past three years.

(via @MindtheProduct)

The rise of product ops: the new discipline powering product excellence. New tools for product management teams promise to improve the process in some way. Data is an increasingly significant component of product decisions. Organizations can innovate at a faster pace than ever before. Many of these changes have led to the rise of a completely new discipline within the product management landscape: product operations. Shaun Juncalshares an overview of product operations, explains what product operations does, and takes a look at how product operations are the new discipline powering product excellence for growing product teams.

(via @productplan)

Hiring a product operations manager? Read this first. You’re all in on Product Operations, and assuming you’re hiring for product operations, how do you find the right person? What are the right skills and experiences for this hire? How do you source candidates? You could just search “Product Operations” on LinkedIn and choose from the 5,700+ people with Product Operations in their title. But as Denise Tilles points out, product operations has many flavors. Some roles veer towards data analysis; others are more integrations and process focused. Sometimes you’ll see a blend of those skills. Denise explains how to find the product operations person who will be the right fit for your needs.

(via @produxlabs)

Product operations: Why now? There’s been more and more attention directed at the “ops” arm of product management: product operations. Product Collective partnered with Pendo to research the rise of product ops, gathering data, and interviewing current practitioners. Product ops titles on LinkedIn have increased by 8% year-over-year, and product ops as a skill is growing even more dramatically — 80% year-over-year. Christine Itwaru explores why there is a growing need for the product ops function and why it’s happening now.

(via @Product_Craft)

Kent J McDonald

About the author

Kent J McDonald writes about and practices software product management. He has product development experience in a variety of industries including financial services, health insurance, nonprofit, and automotive. Kent practices his craft with a variety of product teams and provides just in time resources for product people at KBP.media and Product Collective. When not writing or product managing, Kent is his family’s #ubersherpa, listens to jazz and podcasts (but not necessarily podcasts about jazz), and collects national parks.


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