The ultimate guide to product operations | Melissa Perri and Denise Tilles

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Key Takeaways

Product Operations (Product Ops) is an emerging role designed to support product managers by handling operational tasks, allowing them to focus on strategic work.
Three Pillars of Product Ops: Business & Data Insights, Customer & Market Insights, and Process & Practices.
Benefits of Product Ops: Reduces burnout, improves efficiency, and enables product managers to focus on high-impact strategic decisions.
First Hire: Start with one person focusing on the most critical pillar for your organization.
Product Ops vs. Project Management: Product Ops focuses on enabling better decision-making, while project management is about executing specific projects.
Scaling Product Ops: Begin with a small team and scale as needed, ensuring the function remains lean and efficient.

Product Ops is a relatively new role that has gained traction in the last five years, especially in scaling tech companies.
The role aims to offload operational tasks from product managers, allowing them to focus on strategic work.
Melissa Perri and Denise Tilles, authors of Product Operations: How Successful Companies Build Better Products at Scale, discuss the evolution and importance of this role.

Business & Data Insights:
- Focuses on quantitative data to inform product decisions.
- Helps product managers access and interpret data without spending excessive time on data extraction.
- Example: Creating dashboards for executives to monitor product health and strategy alignment.
Customer & Market Insights:
- Focuses on qualitative data, such as customer feedback and market research.
- Helps streamline user research processes, including participant databases and research synthesis.
- Example: Aggregating customer feedback from sales and support teams to inform product decisions.
Process & Practices:
- Focuses on improving product management processes and governance.
- Helps standardize roadmaps, OKRs, and cross-functional communication.
- Example: Implementing consistent roadmap templates across teams to improve visibility and alignment.

For Product Managers: Frees up time to focus on strategic work, reduces burnout, and improves decision-making.
For Companies: Increases efficiency, improves product quality, and aligns product teams with business goals.
For Executives: Provides better visibility into product performance and strategic alignment.

Fear of Role Overlap: Product managers may fear losing control over decision-making, but Product Ops is designed to support, not replace, their role.
Hiring the Right Person: The first hire is critical and should align with the most pressing need (e.g., data analysis, user research, or process improvement).
Scaling Product Ops: Start small, focus on high-impact areas, and scale as the organization grows.

Challenge: With 360 product managers and 5,000 developers, Athenahealth needed better visibility into product roadmaps and data.
Solution: Implemented Product Ops to streamline data analysis, improve executive visibility, and standardize processes.
Outcome: Product Ops became a critical function, retained through multiple organizational restructurings.

Product Ops is not a replacement for product management but a support function that enables product managers to focus on strategy.
The Three Pillars: Business & Data Insights, Customer & Market Insights, and Process & Practices form the foundation of Product Ops.
Start Small: Begin with one person focusing on the most critical need, then scale as the organization grows.
Product Ops vs. Project Management: Product Ops focuses on enabling better decision-making, while project management is about executing specific projects.
Data is Key: Product Ops helps product managers access and interpret data faster, improving decision-making.
Customer Insights: Product Ops streamlines user research, making it easier for product managers to gather and act on customer feedback.
Process Standardization: Product Ops helps standardize processes, reducing inefficiencies and improving alignment across teams.
Executive Visibility: Product Ops provides executives with better visibility into product performance and strategic alignment.
Hiring the Right Person: The first Product Ops hire should align with the organization’s most pressing need (e.g., data analysis, user research, or process improvement).
Scaling Product Ops: Keep the function lean and focused, scaling only as needed to avoid unnecessary overhead.

Jira Product Discovery: A prioritization and roadmapping tool for product teams.
Amplitude: A product analytics tool for tracking user behavior and product performance.
Looker: A business intelligence tool for data analysis and visualization.
Tableau: A data visualization tool for creating dashboards and reports.
Dovetail: A tool for aggregating and analyzing customer research data.
MongoDB: A database tool used for data extraction and analysis.

Melissa Perri: Author of Escaping the Build Trap, co-author of Product Operations, and founder of Produx Labs.
Denise Tilles: Product leader, coach, and consultant, co-author of Product Operations.

Blake Samic: Head of Product Operations at OpenAI, previously at Uber and Stripe.
Christine: From Pendo, discussed Product Ops in a previous podcast.
Jen Cardello: VP of User Insights at Fidelity, known for her work in research ops.
Brian Bhuta: Chief Product Officer at Forsta, advocates for Product Ops.
Tim Davenport: Oversees Product Ops at Athenahealth.

OpenAI: Employs Product Ops to streamline product management processes.
Uber: One of the early adopters of Product Ops, led by Blake Samic.
Stripe: Utilizes Product Ops to improve product decision-making.
Ramp: A company with a lean Product Ops team.
Deal: Another company leveraging Product Ops for efficiency.
Athenahealth: A case study in the book, showcasing the implementation of Product Ops.
Pendo: A company that has been vocal about the importance of Product Ops.
Forsta: A company where Product Ops has been instrumental in improving product management.
Fidelity: Utilizes Product Ops for user insights and research operations.