STATE OF

PRODUCT OPS
Report 2021
 The State of Product Ops Report 2021

Part 1 3
The Rise of Product Ops

Part 2 5
Key findings

Part 3 8
Defining ProductOps

Part 4 11
Expert insights

Part 5 27
Panel Discussion:
Defining Product Ops

Part 6 43
Product Ops in the physical world

Part 7 49
Learnings from Launching
Product Ops

Part 8 57
In summary

Part 9 59
Contributors

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 Part 1
The Rise of Product Ops

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 The State of Product Ops Report 2021

The Rise of Product Ops

As organizations innovate faster than ever and need to scale more effectively, the role of
Product Operations (POPs) has emerged.

The rise of this new discipline within the product management landscape has been swift.
It’s been powering product excellence and supporting growing product teams at a rapid
rate, but the role of product ops varies significantly from company to company.

So, with an ever-increasing amount of content and conversation around the emerging
POPs function we wanted to take a deep dive into the position, and explore how the role and
responsibilities of product ops are being defined across different companies.

In the following pages we’ll be addressing and unpacking all the incredible insight and info
you need on product ops, like:

• Definitions of the product operations role.

• How PMs view product ops.

• How to establish the function.

• The future of product ops.

And much more.

Ready to get stuck in? Here we go...

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 Part 2
Key findings

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 The State of Product Ops Report 2021

Key findings
Don’t have time to digest the entire report right now?
No worries, we’ve got the key slices of the product ops pie right here:

Does your company have a

dedicated product ops function? NO
12.1%

The majority of the product people

(89.1%) we surveyed already had a
dedicated product ops function in
their organization, highlighting how
the demand for the role has increased
as product teams continue to expand,
evolve their practices, and gain
access to growing amounts of data.

YES
89.1%

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 The State of Product Ops Report 2021

Key Will your company have a product NO

4%
findings ops function in the next 12 months?

Out of all those we surveyed, only a small

amount (4%) had no plans to implement
a POPs function in the near future.

YES
96%

Does product ops play a part in

product-led growth 32.7%

On a scale of 1 to 10, the importance product ops plays in

product-led growth strategies came in at 7.6/10 on average
22.4%
- with 32.7% settling on 8.

10.2% 10.2% 10.2%

6.1%
4.1%
2% 2%
0% 0%

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

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 Part 3
Defining ProductOps

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 The State of Product Ops Report 2021

Defining ProductOps
We asked a bunch of product ops people how they define product operations:

“Product Operations is a core competency of any successful delivery organization that sits
within the Product organization, centered on building confidence and trust with our customers
and partners through focused efforts around process efficiency and measured & managed
continuous improvements initiatives.”

“Product Ops optimizes the product development process and the customer experience to
ensure users get value from the product, and internal teams are educated, and enabled to do
their jobs efficiently.”

“Connective tissue between product development and operationalize teams to ensure we are
building the right way and bringing our teams and customers along for the journey.”

“Product operations serves as a multiplier for the product organization. Product operations
enables a product team to work more efficiently and productively as a team and amongst their
stakeholders.”

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 The State of Product Ops Report 2021

Defining “Product Operations is a departmental function that aims to streamline and improve the

ProductOps
product development process to allow for more effective collaboration and efficient decision-
making, and drive user-centered thinking and behavior to ensure product decisions are based
on user needs.”

“While we don’t have prod ops, we do have program management. Prod ops is similar to
program management in the sense that we’re the conductors helping keep the release train on
track and ensuring the teams are focused on the most important work!”

“Product Operations is a departmental function that aims to streamline and improve the
product development process to allow for more effective collaboration and efficient decision-
making, and drive user-centered thinking and behavior to ensure product decisions are based
on user needs.”

“ProductOps is critical in answering the question “Is what we’ve built working?”

And then here’s our definition of the POPs role:

Product Ops is a function designed to support product excellence either at scale

or as an organization scales. There isn’t a ‘one size fits all’ definition for the role
and it can look totally different company to company.

It can even totally change year to year at an organization. For example, it looks
very different at Uber now to how it did five years ago. Broadly speaking though,
Product Ops helps with process, efficiency and decision making by improving
communication and removing friction points.

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 Part 4
Expert insights

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 The State of Product Ops Report 2021

Expert insights
What better way to explore the emerging function of product ops than by asking the experts?

Throughout this section of the report, we’ve got some of the best of the best product pros to offer
up their thoughts on everything from team structures and key skills to internal investment and the
evolution of POPs…

But let’s start by delving into what the core responsibilities of product ops actually are...

What are the core responsibilities of product ops?

Manage the product

Ensure data is Streamline pivotal
stack and tools
easily available tasks and processes

Support POPs core Keep on top of

onboarding the curriculum
responsibilities

Maintain the Stay on top of

right resources key changes

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 The State of Product Ops Report 2021

Responsibilities Increasing efficiency, helping to create a better product, improving customer engagement,

of product ops
streamlining communications between product teams, promoting product innovation… we
could go on. But safe to say the core responsibilities of a product ops professional can be varied.

Let’s just rundown some of the more prominent ones:

• Support onboarding - product ops can help to define a clear onboarding process, ensuring
new team members are up to speed without slowing the current team down.

• Keep on top of the curriculum - every member of the product team needs to accurately
measure what they’re learning, and prod ops can make sure there are convenient ways to
schedule and access valuable training.

• Streamline pivotal tasks and processes - from interpreting user

feedback and conducting user interviews to roadmapping, prod
ops can identify opportunities to streamline these processes.

• Stay on top of key changes - teams need to stay competitive,

and product ops can help them to constantly improve by
identifying the most impactful areas and rolling out best
practices.

• Maintain the right resources - from user story templates to

survey frameworks, prod ops can ensure resources for product
managers are right and made easily accessible.

• Ensure data is easily available - product teams need to

manage massive amounts of data, but POPs can manage this
for the teams, empowering them with easy access to the key
insights in the data.

• Manage the product stack and tools - managing and

optimizing the stack is so much easier with product ops, leaving
PMs to focus on building the product.

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 The State of Product Ops Report 2021

Responsibilities Let’s get some expert opinions on this as well:

of product ops Kam Dadfar, Director of Product Operations at Onfido.

• Analyze data to identify areas of improvement and main drivers.

• Work cross-functionally and drive solutions to make improvements.

• Measure and monitor those implementations to hold teams accountable.

• Design and apply processes to improve performance.

• Improve the effectiveness and efficiency of those processes to maintain

them over time.

Martin Järve, Manager, Product Operations Engineering at Twilio Inc.

• Process documentation (creation and alignment).

• Funnel metrics.

• Ad hoc project management and triaging.

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 The State of Product Ops Report 2021

How mature does an organization have

to be to employ a product ops function?
Initially POPs was a function that existed only in large MNCs or hyper growth start-ups, but do you need
to fall into one of these camps to need product ops? As expected, the answer isn’t exactly clear cut.

Many organizations, no matter the size, can struggle to grow and develop their product teams.
Especially when it comes to ensuring those teams are as effective during each stage of expansion.

As product operations becomes more of a pivotal role, companies will need to invest more in the
function in order to adequately support PMs as their organizations evolve. But will this just be startups,
more established enterprises, or both?

Here’s what some of our POPs folks had to say:

Christian MacLean, Director of Product Operations and Merchant Product

Strategy at Auctane

I don’t think it does, but I do think there’s significant productivity gains to be had
in a number of situations. For example here’s two:
• Product Ops can help offset inherent weaknesses in team skills - for example
Analytics when a team doesn’t have analytics as a strong core competency or
the data is extremely complex; you’re not excused as a PM from needing data, but
it may be more efficient to specialize in product data analysis within an ops team
• You have a complex organization; at Auctane we have 5 different brands built
on top of 200+ 3rd party integrations, and we’re moving towards a platform
strategy that will see all the brands use the same set of platform services.
Planning across these teams + taking into account the needs of other teams
is a massive challenge and Product Ops has had a significant impact on
determining core planning and operational practices to help organize and
streamline the work required.
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 The State of Product Ops Report 2021

How mature Kevin Sakamoto, Director of Digital Product Operations at Dollar Shave Club

does an I would look specifically at the Product team for signals. Effective Product
Managers spend a significant amount of time in user research and while the

organization allocation differs per organization, the moment that protected time begins to
be consumed by operational aspects is when a Product Operations role should

have to be be considered.

to employ a Any company that truly entrusts their Product Managers to try, fall, and fly,
should invest in Product Ops. Product discovery yields data points that Product

product ops Managers will eventually connect to illuminate the way towards success. This
cultivation requires time and a safe environment that, while different across

function? companies, are the responsibility of Product Operations to provide.

Gerisha Nadaraju, Former Product Ops Lead at Truelayer

I don’t think maturity is always the driver but rather there are certain clear
signals that a company needs product ops. These signals are usually related
to issues around alignment, efficiency and communication across the
product organization. In my experience, these signals tend to appear when an
organization starts to scale with multiple product teams who need to interact
with the rest of the business to deliver multiple products.

If you’re a product focused company (as all tech startups are) who wants to
scale efficiently then product ops should be a priority investment for you.

Martin Järve, Manager, Product Operations Engineering at Twilio Inc.

We live in a complex world and companies are the same. You could say prod
ops is a lighthouse getting everyone safely to the same island.

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 The State of Product Ops Report 2021

How do you structure a

product ops team?
Product operations is designed to help product teams operate as effectively as possible. But
how do you go about creating the function from scratch? There’s uncertainty about how to
start, structure and scale a team, and in many organizations product ops is a team of one.

Let’s see what some of our report’s panel had to say:

Bjorn Simonson, Senior Product Operations Manager at iZettle.

I’d ideally have a mix of Design Management and an interested ops team.
It’s about putting together a group of people interested in the topics and
responsibilities, and having the time available to dedicate themselves to it.

To me it’s a trade-off between having good coverage of the different skills that
need to be represented vs having too big of a group that will have a hard time
to get time together etc.

In terms of both established and start-ups:

For start-ups you’re probably not in a position to hire a dedicated OPS person/
team so I would look for people who are interested in this kind of work, and have
them set off a certain amount of time per week for ops work. You also need
someone from the leadership team to sponsor the work, or even better be an
active part of it, to show that it’s taken seriously and is important.

For more established companies, you will have the resources to hire dedicated
people. The danger is that they might get separated from the “real work” if they
are not integrated well. So it’s still super important that the CTO/CDO/CPO help
drive home the importance of this work and clearly delegate to the team and
give them a clear mandate to own and change things.

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 The State of Product Ops Report 2021

How do you Christian MacLean, Director of Product Operations and Merchant Product

structure a
Strategy at Auctane

We’re currently structured into 2 streams - Product Operations Analyst and

product ops Product Operations Manager. Under those we have Associate, Intermediate
(without the word Intermediate) Senior and Lead levels - same levels as our PM

team? team. I’m at the Director level and manage the team who are all ICs.

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 The State of Product Ops Report 2021

What are the core skill sets that make

up a product ops professional?
Facilitation skills, being an enabler in workshops and meetings, analytical skills, having a strong
ability to analyze what the problems are, being highly organized, and having the ability to
create efficient structures and clean processes. Just some of the things that come to mind when
discussing the skill sets of a product ops professional.

But what do some of our experts think?

Marielle Velander, Product Operations Lead at Dashlane.

These are some of the top skills I believe are valuable from my own experience:

• Facilitation skills - in order to drive effective conversations between a range

of stakeholders/functions and facilitate outcome-oriented meetings.

• People/conversation skills - as a product ops you are constantly engaging

with people and having conversations, so it helps to know how to effectively
initiate a conversation, build strong relationships, and drive a conversation in
a meaningful direction.

• Analytical skills - you need to be able to analyze what the problems to solve
are and effectively prioritize them, because otherwise the scope of product
ops can get overwhelming.

• Organizational skills - product ops is all about providing structure to the

way our teams work, and it helps to have the urge to apply that to your own
work (it’s no secret in my company that I love a beautifully designed table or
spreadsheet, and one of the first things I did was reorganize our knowledge
infrastructure simply because it bothered me).

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 The State of Product Ops Report 2021

What are the Christian MacLean, Director of Product Operations and Merchant Product

core skill sets

Strategy at Auctane

• A strong ‘value’ and ‘process’ mindset; it’s not really a core trait of PMs to

that make up think in terms of ‘adding capacity’; your job in Product Ops is to do just that
for the PMs - add capacity so they have more time to invest AND to ensure

a product ops that you’re constantly reminding them where and how they should best
invest that time.
professional? • A strong focus on proactive and cross-functional collaboration; Ops
team members need to have or gain an end-to-end view of the business
(understanding how information, tasks, and products move through the
org); I don’t think this is a natural focus areas for PM’s who tend to have a
functional view of the business

• The ability to let go of baggage and a cultural focus; a lot of orgs

(especially ones that focus on speed or velocity, or are more output driven)
have an allergy to ‘capital P Process’ so there’s a certain amount of ‘letting
go’ of your own bad experiences as a PM in dealing with inefficient or
ill-fitting processes that’s required, and there’s a lot of behaviour change
required to create and roll out new org-wide processes - if you’re not
someone with a strong focus on, and reputation for building culture, you’ll
have an uphill battle.

• Experience - there’s no compression algorithm experience; having time

under your belt in a number of organizations is invaluable.

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 The State of Product Ops Report 2021

Will more organizations embrace

product ops?
With so much talk around product ops, it’s certainly a role we’ll see increasing demand for.
As more organizations adopt product-led growth strategies, the impact and importance of
product ops will of course increase and evolve, as teams look to become even more agile and
efficient. So what do those in the role think about product ops growing across the board?

Martin Järve, Manager, Product Operations Engineering at Twilio Inc.

I think it’s a growing team for every company who knows what’s good for them!

Kevin Sakamoto, Director of Digital Product Operations at Dollar Shave Club

Absolutely. The vectors used by Product Operations operatives will differ

depending on the organization but the core tenant will remain the same.
We’re here to let Product be Product.

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Will more Gerisha Nadaraju, Former Product Ops Lead at Truelayer

organizations Absolutely. The amount of interest and conversation I’ve seen taking place
around product ops in the past year has been phenomenal. I’ve had a

embrace lot of people reaching out to me who want to set up product ops in their
companies (from employees on the ground who have identified the need

product ops? through to CPOs). I think every product led company will have a product ops
function in the future.

Christian MacLean, Director of Product Operations and Merchant Product

Strategy at Auctane

Absolutely - as the role becomes more defined and there’s more content and
success stories attributed to the role of Product Ops in prominent companies.

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Is product ops a new function?

Has product operations always been around? Is it truly a brand new role? As we’ve established, it
doesn’t have a clear definition but it’s not necessarily new. The role is becoming more essential for
product orgs that are scaling, often making the difference between success and failure for many.

If it’s not new, then why is the role on the rise?

Organizations that are utilizing product ops can gain a significant advantage over their rivals. Of course
the overall increase in operations roles, the rising expectations of customers and the growing availability
of product usage data, are all prompting companies to employ product ops teams.

We asked Sandra Juras, Senior Product Operations Manager at Freeletics,

for her thoughts...
I would say that product ops did exist before, but not as a dedicated role. I think
it was more something that a mix of ops-minded PMs and product leads took on,
together with other ops-minded people that could naturally come from all across
the company. I think this is also why we see that product ops right now is coming
from so many different backgrounds. In its essence product ops does two things:
1) It helps companies scale.
2) It solves organisational problems around product management.
I think both of these problems have become bigger over the last years with the huge increase in
product-led companies, as well as a lot of scale in these companies, which then require more
formalized support to scale. And whenever you have scaling issues, naturally someone who has an ops
mindset will try to support this process, hence we saw people from bizops, customer support, product
leadership, individual PMs, agile coaches & scrum masters, product coaches, sales, product marketing,
(business) analysts, and so on and so forth taking on various aspects of this role.

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 The State of Product Ops Report 2021

Alongside PMs, who should product ops

be working most closely with?
It’s a cross-functional role, so it can be argued product ops is designed to not only work closely with
PMs, but also to collaborate with all teams connected to the product life cycle. So we asked Christian
Rahn, Senior Product Operations Manager at Better.com, to help us clear this up…

Christian Rahn, Senior Product Operations Manager at Better.com

The question of the reporting structure of product ops is a tough one, because
of the dynamics at play. It typically originates out of the product org, because
the function in necessary, but as things scale, the following problem comes up:

The product team is the customer of product operations. The processes that
ProdOps creates are the product of the team, and that product is consumed by
the Product team. As we all know, the job is to serve your customer the product
that they need - but that’s a distinct situation from actually reporting to your
customer.

ProdOps ‘loyalty’ really needs to be to the efficiency and efficacy of the

processes, rather than whatever the immediate needs of the product team (or
a part of the product team) might be

So in practice, you probably want ProdOps to be a small parallel to Product.

The path here isn’t carved very deep so folks accomplish this differently.

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How do you think the product ops role

will evolve in the next 12 months?
What do we think? Well, if a company’s core is product, then naturally its growth will be product-led too.
Product teams are consistently under a lot of pressure - after all aiming for constant excellence is highly
demanding, and requires carefully planned systems, agile teamwork and superb best practices.

All this means growing organizations are in need of a strong operational backbone to ensure success for
cross-functional teams. Meaning it’s likely the demand for the product ops role will continue to steadily
rise, as PMs grow more and more eager for the best support to foster innovation and efficient delivery.

We asked Elia Ahadi, Technical Program Manager at Keybank, for his opinion...

Elia Ahadi, Technical Program Manager at Keybank.

For my team, product operations overlaps with technical product/program

management, it’s still an evolving role and not officially called ‘product
operations manager’. I think as the role evolves with more process and
management of product management happens, the role will be more prevalent.

So far I’ve seen on job boards at least only the companies with the latest
product management processes have officially developed a ‘product ops’ role.

At Keybank, technical product/program management is still developing

officially, product operations still is part of it, just not officially.

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Product Ops role in the tech stack

Next, we took a look at who maintains/decides upon the tech stack in product organizations
and the result showed:

• 25.5% of respondents said that product operations were responsible, but not by
themselves. As many agreed that product ops maintains/decides upon the tech stack
alongside DevOps, UXOps, and in general collaboration with product and tech leadership.

• Engineering teams, engineering managers, or the VP of Engineering were also a popular

answer, with 27.6% of respondents saying they were responsible for the tech stack.

Here’s a breakdown of some of the answers given when we asked:

Who maintains/decides upon the tech stack in your product organization?

Product Operations, DevOps & UXOps Tech leads

Product Ops Product Ops maintains the tech stack, but decisions are made collectively between Product
Ops, relevant teams needing the tech, the IT department, and company executives

We can decide ourselves but we tend to use whatever

product uses, it makes everyone’s life easier Product with collaborative
discussion in engineering
Mainly Product Operations team with
Engineering
Product Managers
some expert teams (Design Studio &
Developer Experiences teams)

It’s a collaboration among product

ops, engineering, and design PMs, Product Ops, and VP of Engineering has
Procurement say for 1 of the platforms in the tech stack

Product Operations, in collaboration with Product and Technology leadership

CTO/engineering

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 The State of Product Ops Report 2021

Part 5
Panel Discussion:
Defining Product Ops
Fancy watching this section of the report instead?
Just head here.

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 The State of Product Ops Report 2021

Panel Discussion: Defining Product Ops

Now, we’re going to relive a few of the most popular and relevant presentations from our Product
Operations Summit. Breaking them down a little to make them more digestible.

To access this content, you’d normally need a PLA membership plan, but because you downloaded
this report - you get them for free. If you don’t have time to read through these, you can watch them
instead - right here.

Below are some Q&As from the panel discussion centred around defining the POPs role. If you want to
skip ahead to check out Asher Jacobson’s talk on product ops in the physical world head to page 43.
Or if you’d like to fast forward to Gerisha Nadaraju’s learnings from her launching product ops
presentation go from page 49.

Q: How do you structure product ops to be able to scale solutions globally, but with
enough flexibility to support local nuances?

Alfonso Amaya Parra, Global Group Product Operations Manager, Uber

When we operate the operations organization, we also have a lean structure

that we can engage with frequently that captures the needs of the different
regions, and how we interface with them. The operations teams within the 60
plus countries that we operate have central teams, and we engage directly
with them to make sure that we’re capturing as much as possible from those
insights. We engage frequently with the legal teams they work with, and we try
to make sure that we’re capturing those local needs that are happening.

And that’s the best way we’ve identified to make sure that we are capturing
those local needs without the kind of challenges that would happen if we had to
go directly to every country. So basically, scaling up the operations organisation
to make sure that we have dedicated PLCs helping us out across the regions.
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Panel Martin Järve, Manager, Product Operations Engineering at Twilio Inc

Discussion: We mostly deal with our phone number products, and those are highly
regulated in some of the areas that we’re trying to expand in. So our team has

Defining to be very much aligned on legal with the customer facing teams on what the
customers need and how to get the good experience, but still stay on top of all

Product Ops the requirements.

I think the centralized information that we gather is very important for the product
team to build this. But at the same time you get products that don’t silo into one
market. I have seen this happen with a lot of us centric companies that tried to
build products that are very us centric, and then just expand them to the rest of
the world. We try and manage all the pipeline metrics and all these requirements
to make sure that product has all the information they need to build us great
products that serve our customers well.

I think there are different themes in terms of alignment. One of the problems that
we noticed was, regardless of how much you tried to bring in customer centricity
or data driven decisions, if the process is onset, or the foundations of the team
onset, that focus never shifts away from thinking about innovation, thinking about
how to build a feature properly, and iterating and reviewing it. Because most of
the time, you’re sort of thinking about what are the next steps to building? Who do
I communicate to about all that sort of stuff?

How do you make sure that the things that you’re building and the things
that you’re focusing on, are aligned, and you’re working in the same right
direction? I think product operation is there to facilitate those questions, those
conversations and processes. And that’s why it’s so key that it sits in the middle
of everything.

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Panel Q: How do you structure product ops in terms of where it fits into the
organization, is it evolving and where do you see it going?
Discussion:
Defining
Chris Hogan, VP Product Operations at HubSpot

We have three pillars at HubSpot:

Product Ops Flywheel pillar

Our go-to-market teams, sales services and marketing.

Company pillar
Mainly composed of our finance and legal people

Product management pillar

This is UX research, design, engineering.

Product ops is a distinct pillar within the product organisation. I think ultimately,
we are trying to be a partner to the teams that exist within our product org.

So you have a product leader, and they have an engineering partner and a UX
partner. We want to have a product ops team to scale so they have a partner on
product ops that can help them think through a lot of the decision making. And
take a data driven approach to making that decision.

We used to have product analysts, which were embedded in our product teams,
we then had a kind of a business operations function, which was helping to
understand what was going on in the business. And pricing was separate. We’re
increasingly going towards a model where we’re bringing those together and
having one person look across those three functions, and understand the work
being done within analytics, business operations, pricing, and ensuring that all of
that work is aligned to the product line goals.

That’s the structure we’re moving towards, as opposed to having those three
functions within products ABS kind of decentralised, we’re pulling them together
and making sure that they’re all contributing towards the goals of the product

> line as a whole.

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Panel We’ve done several iterations of a role progression matrix on our team, trying to

Discussion:
define what the roles are. And we have some pretty good structure. As our org
grows, the competencies change in terms of what it means to be successful. How

Defining
do you define something that’s more objective versus highly subjective, that’s
something we struggle with at scale, so that the team knows where they stand in

Product Ops terms of progression enrol. But that’s a challenge within the product as a whole.

Alfonso Amaya Parra

I think in Uber, it’s also been a shifting topic. And we’ve tried to make sure that
we evolve as the organization evolves. Initially, we were within the operations
organization. We reported within them, we tried to be the voice of operations
within the product teams. But recently, we shifted to be within the product
organization, we wanted to make sure that we were closer to how the products
were being built, and that we were helping them manage all those stakeholders
across the company.

Definitely, it’s a moving target to make sure that we are as best equipped
in terms of the organization and also the skill sets that we need to have for
the success of the company. And for us, I think it has worked really well to be
within the product organization. Being able to be closer in terms of what we’re
developing to make sure that we are more in sync with what we’re trying to do
across the globe.

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Panel Q: There’s been a lot more development within POPs from a career pathing
perspective, what are your thoughts on this?
Discussion:
Defining Alfonso Amaya Parra

Product Ops
I think product ops builds you quite a diverse set of skills that are broad enough
to allow you to move to other functions within the product ops organization.
We’ve been able to build a career path in which you’re able to specialize within
certain product verticals, grow and manage teams as required, and be able to
lead several layers of organization within product ops.

So you can specialize and grow in terms of scope and also skill set by
managing people. And there’s also the opportunity to expand that scope and
move across different product ops teams.

The skill sets within product ops, depending on the function that you’re
supporting, can also work in product development. And there’s also been
several people that work across the product organization that have decided to
pursue and transition to product management roles.

Chris Hogan

I think in product ops, you develop such a diverse set of skills and a really good
feeling of how the organization works. And so we’ve been finding that there’s a
lot of lateral opportunities. I think my advice would be to try to encourage that,
because it will really help in terms of the versatility of the career paths that you
can offer.

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Panel Marie Gaumont, Director of Product Operations, PayFit

Discussion: I think this is a transmittal team that allows you to have a great overview of the
company. And also what I say to the candidates, when I’m hiring, is that product

Defining ops is an opportunity to go to something else. You are developing so many skills
that you have several paths in front of you moving to product management.

Product Ops Some people are seeing product ops as a gateway to project management,
but also a bridge to all the UPS positions and other ops teams. People that want
to go into a more entrepreneurial position can look to do so because they’re
building a lot of things and training and testing. And then they can move to
build their own company, because they’ve created an operating system for a
huge team. So they feel that they can build their own company as a CPU or co
author. That’s really a wide range of opportunities after product ops.

Sharmin Abdo, Product Operations Lead, Receipt Bank

At the moment, the way that we’re going to be structuring product operations sits
across all the teams, there isn’t going to be a product ops manager for
each team, but more in terms of a facilitator. And although we’re very close
to the development process, and how they prioritize, etc, we don’t make the
decision we sort of just facilitate, we also have a DevOps team.

So they’re much closer in terms of a scrum manager, and they work with the
teams in terms of making sure that some of the blockages are unblocked. We’re
in very early stages in product operations, so we don’t have a career path. And
we’re sort of at a lucky stage where we’re defining what it looks like. It really
doesn’t matter where you come from in terms of background, you just have to
be willing to get mucky and get stuck into it.

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Panel Q: We’re all in our roles to solve challenges for companies, can you talk about
a challenge you’ve either recently faced or are currently facing within the
Discussion: organization, and how you did or are working to solve it?

Defining Sharmin Abdo

Product Ops When I first joined product, there was a lot of feedback from across the org, in
terms of how we can set the processes up. So there were a lot of complaints
and feedback coming through. As product ops have evolved, there’s always
been this consistent feedback and thoughts on how it should be structured,
some of the processes that are in place etc.

So one of the things we did was to get the key stakeholders from across the
org, customer success, Director of Marketing, directors in product, all into one
room and brainstorm all the things that we wanted to improve on in terms of
processes and communication. Then picked out the key ones that we thought
were easy to do. Then the fundamental things that we wanted to change in the
future. That did two things:

1) Bring everyone closer together, to outline the problems that we were trying to
solve.

2) Help define the people and the skills that we needed in the team, as well as
what we needed to track.

So we’re not definitely not there in terms of solving all the problems, but it
helped align everyone and build a relationship.

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Panel Alfonso Amaya Parra

Discussion: One of the key challenges we’re trying to address is speed. How can we be
faster and more efficient as we try to roll out products?

Defining As we become a more mature organization with more cross functional teams

Product Ops
looking for a position in those different topics, it becomes more challenging to
make sure that we’re all aligned in the same direction, and at a good speed. So
that’s something that we’re trying to work on.

Martin Järve

I think one of the main challenges we are facing is efficiency. We’re working with
a lot of teams to understand where operationally we can do better, while still
expanding and scaling properly. So I think that’s one of the biggest challenges,
which also needs to be aligned with all the product plans, but also the
expansion plans. And that’s something that we’re really focused on right now.

Marie Gaumont

For us, I think one of the main challenges is to make sure that we have the
same level of adoption and excellence within all the teams. So we have like
ten different product teams, and we have different maturity levels within the
product teams, especially because we are a young company, you don’t have
the same number of people who have the same experience in the teams.
So it can be challenging to have any process and template that fits all the
needs, in all the teams, and to make sure that everyone has the same level of
understanding. So we have some things that we want to focus on this year, to
really have tailored coaching to make sure that everyone can have the same
opportunity to benefit from what we do.

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Panel Chris Hogan

Discussion:
As well as creating a sense of team within product ops, a lot of identity ends
up going down to the product line level, while at the same time, we want team

Defining
level collaboration in product ops itself, to get the same type of knowledge
sharing that we need. Especially now in the current working style we have. So

Product Ops how we balance ensuring product line expertise is in-depth, while ensuring
that we get best practices shared at the product ops level
is a challenge.

We’ve invested in a centralized analytics platform team, which serves our

entire product ops group, regardless of product line. So that we’re working
on the same thing with the same data infrastructure, in terms of how we’re
building, reporting and analyzing. That platform team enables our entire
group, and that’s been really healthy and a good thing. And I’m very happy we
made that investment.

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Panel Q: How are your teams setting goals and objectives and then measuring success?

Discussion: Chris Hogan

Defining We have a kind of competency matrix aligned around trying to be somewhat

specific around what success for that role level looks like. And that’s been a

Product Ops really helpful document to guide those conversations. At a team level, though,
we do try to push alignment with our product groups that we support, so those
groups know what they’re trying to accomplish.

We’re ultimately kind of defining what that success is for the product teams. And so
if they have a clear understanding of what those objectives are each quarter, and
they’re hitting them, that’s really how we judged success for the team.

• Do those groups understand what they’re they’re aiming for?

• Do they feel like they have control over it?
• Do they understand the variables and the inputs that they can have?

Sharmin Abdo

We’ve actually just started our OKRs and KPIs, and we’re still experimenting,
but we’ve got the happiness index. Which means we’re going to start
measuring the team’s happiness and retrospectives. By understanding the
level of happiness, we make sure that the right processes are in place.

So it’s sort of a shared ownership of the happiness metric, then we’ve got
customer retention acting like an all-star metric. If we’re going in the right
direction, with customer retention, then we know the things that we’re doing
within the product are helping, and there aren’t that many defects, etc.

We send out surveys to the business, to understand whether product ops has
made a difference in bringing visibility across the org, around the product
roadmap, or whether the communication is there, etc.

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Panel Q: Do you share customer success type metrics with the product management
team directly? Or are you looking at those differently from a product ops
Discussion: perspective? How is that interaction working?

Defining Sharmin Abdo

Product Ops So at the moment, we hired a product analyst, and he’s building out a set of
KPIs for each team. Those will differ a little bit from the product operations.
Product operations, we like to say as the active client, is also a metric. Looking
at the active client rate in the last 90 days, if that dips, then we know there’s
something going on in the org or with our customers that needs to be reviewed.
And part of the product operations role is to investigate that and bring the
findings to the product organisation. So yeah, it differs in terms of how you’re
looking at it.

Alfonso Amaya Parra

First we work directly with the product teams to make sure that we are
supporting them and we have aligned what are going to be our key results for
that particular half. Then we also try to take a step back and look beyond what
the particular product area is supporting, what we should be doing and what we
need to do.

It’s a combined process:

1) Work really close with the product team and make sure that we have OKRs
that are aligned with the overall team.

2) Try to fill in the gaps in terms of other things that are more process driven or
that are more cross functional, that we should be catering to and make sure
that we have some clear objectives. So it doesn’t become too blurry with
other people on the teams.

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Panel Marie Gaumont

Discussion:
We are working the team on a quarterly basis. We have objective settings at the
individual level. So usually we use the OKRs of the project. So for each project,

Defining
we define objectives and key results that will allow you to measure the success
of the project, which are actually the individual objective settings to the project

Product Ops leader as well.

We try to share these objective settings with the people that we work with.
Usually we do projects with two people. So one from our team, one from the
other team, and we share the same OKRs on projects. By setting the same
objectives this way, we ensure that we have the same target. And we have the
same engagement from the two teams.

Martin Järve

The main objectives we have are around customer success rate. So if the
customers are not successful with the product, we have to get into it and see
if operationally there’s something wrong, or there’s something wrong with the
product. And the other thing is the ratio of operating models. We’re driving
efficiency. So our goal is to drive down or drive up those ratios of how we can
operate. So basically, how we can scale. Those are the most important metrics
right now.

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Panel Q: How have you thought about specific roles within product ops versus the
more broad scope?
Discussion: Chris Hogan

Defining I was kind of the first product ops person, very much a jack-of-all trades. And

Product Ops as we’ve scaled, we’ve gotten slightly more specialized. I would say, there’s a
few distinct roles on the team. There’s the product ops manager, that person
is more of a jack-of-all trades, they’re managing both the operations and
planning side of the team. As well as on the analytic side of the team, the more
technical side, but that product ops manager is managing both and looking
across the product line.

Below them, they even have ops and planning folks who are also more jack-of-all
trades there. They have some semblance of a financial modelling background,
they certainly have a strong data background and are SQL proficient and know
our data stack well. But they don’t have a tonne of technical depth, or as much as
our product analyst track, who has much stronger technical expertise.

We want to have a distinct track for folks that want to stay on more of an
analyst or IC route, that are excellent in that space to continue to excel there. So
that’s how we think about the role structure today. That’s going to continue to
change though.

Marie Gaumont

We’re in the phase that we’ve started thinking more about experience because
we are still a small team. We’ve formalized the four pillars, and the idea is
to have one person responsible for the pillar, and for the strategy around
the pillar along the year. We still have one expert in our team, on knowledge
management. Because it’s a huge topic, and it touches all the teams and all the
people within the project organization. And we are not really good at it yet, so
we needed one specific person for that area.
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Panel Martin Järve

Discussion: In terms of skills, we’re more jack-of-all trades, but we have focused on certain
products. So that has given our PMs, and other stakeholders, good go-to people

Defining to ask about a certain product, who know everything about that product.

Product Ops
On one hand, we’re like specialists, but on the other hand, on the skill set, I think
it’s quite all around the board. But we do have some experts also, like data
analysts who like data science stuff. I really liked the idea of the knowledge base
handling, so that sounds like a good thing to adapt.

Alfonso Amaya Parra

I think it becomes quite handy that people come into the role with a broad set
of skill sets. That jack-of-all trades perspective is really useful to make sure
that you’re able to flex according to what the specific team needs.

So when you have that broader perspective that you can bring to the team,
it’s easier to make sure that you’re adding value naturally over time. You start
specializing more depending on the team and the particular needs. But that
broad set of skill sets for us has become really valuable, to make sure that
we’re able to support depending on the teams and we definitely try to look for
a specific set of skills that we think are key to our roles and particularly for our
marketplace. Naturally that broad perspective has become really valuable.

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Panel Q: What tools and software are you using for either the knowledge management
related functionality or just for general project management?
Discussion:
Defining Chris Hogan

We use a lot of tools. We have 300 sass apps or something but we use

Product Ops Confluence. It’s kind of our core knowledge management tool. Which works
pretty well. We’ve had to hire a team, two people now manage Confluence for
us. Just organizing it and making sure it’s up to date.

Each of the groups have their own kind of system. But Confluence is at the core
of it for HubSpot.

Martin Järve

The GTM organization uses different knowledge base management, but most
of the product team uses Confluence. I know a lot of people would say sticky
notes and Google Sheets and Google Docs and whatever they can find. So
that’s probably the problem in a lot of organizations.

Sharmin Abdo

Another great tool is Airtable. So when we were starting out, and we didn’t
really have a process, we used Airtable for all things. So all of our research,
design roadmap, everything would go in there and then we’ve moved into
Confluence. But Airtable is a great tool, if you want to quickly get something in
there and it’s very easy to use.

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Part 6
Product Ops in the
physical world
Fancy watching this section of the report instead?
Just head here.

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Product Ops in the physical world

With Asher Jacobson, Product Operations Manager, Virgin Active

The importance of structure

At Virgin Active, our business was something where people would use or engage with products. But the
products being websites, mobile apps and personal trainers. It’s more about something that could be
continuously improved, developed or monetized at Virgin Active experiences.

So if there was a high intensity workout, it would be a group exercise or workouts on the actual
equipment. different teams would manage or oversee the products or experiences. And then input
would be given if there was a crossover between the two.

For example, if we had to feature an experience, over a particular month, the product team would look
at the customer journey across our digital platforms and the apps. How the member would interact with
the product, and the entire team within a consultant specific experience context. So this was all about
products versus experiences, which is not to be confused with experiencing a product.

This isn’t necessarily wrong. We’ve followed a relatively strict design process. We did user stories
personas, we used cases, service blueprints, research interviews, we adhered to relatively strict service
design standards. We made sure that anything we built could be measured against key standards,
such as being easy to find by anyone, be usable by everyone equally, work in a way that is familiar and
require no prior knowledge of use.

We went through the process of onboarding in-club staff so that they can be prepared if members
had any questions around the tool. We made sure that the features of the product that we rolled out
served its purpose. Created products and features that supported the exercise experiences, but in a
way that was integrated into that exercise experience.

The challenge came in that we had this invisible line in the sand that separated in-club with online or
digital. So this may be the case in almost every business, probably for pretty much anyone who does
marketing, there is always this us versus them mentality, which I believe inhibits problem solving.

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Product Ops Enhancing the customer experience

in the physical At Virgin Active, we’ve evolved into becoming a customer centric product-led business. However,
we have expanded on our definition of products to include exercise experiences. This wasn’t

world necessarily a conscious strategic decision, but more of something that organically happened
over a short period of time. We now create products and features that will enhance the overall
experience a member has with the brand. Whether this is in-club, or at home.

Our program team setup has changed as well. We form pipes of experts to deliver a solution. Now
this may seem an old thing that was implemented in existing brands previously. However, for
a corporate like Virgin Active, it’s something relatively new, as we were focused on a bricks and
mortar business.

So the pipes now include:

• Product managers.

• Experienced designers.

• UI designers.

• Exercise experience managers.

• Developers.

• And sales team members.

This ensures that no matter where the member engages with the
brand, whether it’s on the phone with the sales consultant, or in-club,
or online, we cover the experience and ensure that it is seamless.

Due to new products launched, we no longer see the members being

active only when they swipe their card to get into the gym. A product
that we recently worked on and developed was our first truly digital
integrated product. The idea was to create a product that would get
people moving again, keep them active in 2021.

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Product Ops We wanted to get people coming back to gyms to experience the trainers, the equipment, the classes.

in the physical
However, due to government restrictions, we had to get people working out at home and outdoors and
not be reliant on training solely in the club.

world We had to find ways to engage with our members, and to help them achieve their goals and targets.
We built and launched a new product that was targeted for females between the ages of 35 and 45,
with the main goal of toning and weight loss, and we had various touch points that we would take the
members through.

We pulled all the data we had and looked at the habits, the trends, points of failure, areas of success,
and we started working on yield training programs, and various touch points. Our exercise teams
focused on the workouts to be done to achieve the goal and how long would be needed. We then
identified supporting tools that would help people achieve their goals.

So based on the findings that this audience are primarily working parents with very busy schedules, we
had to look at quick and effective workouts over a longer period of time. Therefore, we had our holding
programme that was connected with all of our existing products and tools and services that we could
potentially offer to help support them.

• We built it with a personal trainer, a dietitian and mentor.

• We had pre-recorded talks and live sessions on closed groups on Facebook.

• We had motivational inspirational speakers who were going through the same challenges as our
target audience.

This program was built into our mobile app and existing online platform to be easily accessed. workouts
were assigned to the member based on their progress in the program, and options were given for info,
online or outdoor exercises. Member data will then be collected throughout these various touch points,
and we use various tools such as measurements or online submissions.

We also had points for scanning into and we had points for validating a workout completed in-club on
equipment, or whether it was an online workout. We can sink your after run through Strava for instance,
submitting your meal plans and macronutrients and how you were tracking.

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Product Ops All of this would basically reward members with a point system so that they could see they were

in the physical
achieving their goal. Members are guided through these programs on their devices. But the seamless
experience continued in-club, across social platforms as well. This was easily accessed by any of the

world PTs or the club staff members that needed the system.

They would then be able to take their profile, share that with a personal trainer or a dietitian. And the
program could then be adjusted depending on their goal and how they were tracking.

Where does all of this fit in from a product perspective?

Product ops is a role that’s fit for purpose. So where a business lacks research departments, product ops
could take on that responsibility. They could manage partners on a project, and they could be an element
of project management. I see product ops as the glue that holds everyone together.

You have a design process, which has design ops, you’ve got the build process, which is managed by
DevOps, and the launch and collateral and advertising managed by the marketing ops.

But what happens when you’re working on a real world installation on digital rollouts, that need product
user testing? Product ops to me seems to be the logical role to bring this all together and to run with this
end to end. However, they now take on a new role, whereby they are assisting the product manager with
real world requirements and installations as opposed to just digital products.

An ops manager and physical spaces are more focused around the functional management and the
running of a facility, not necessarily digital installations. Are the scanners working? Are the air conditioning
functioning? Are we COVID compliant? They are not concerned about whether members can scan a QR
code to help them achieve their goals based on tracking different workouts.

My role personally, as the product ops manager on this project, was to provide the data and to start
refining the contents at our target audience, as well as varying what the DevOps design ops, and
project management has, after the initial design and builds were done. We went into the real world
onboarding and installation.

We took staff and club members through the program. We supplied them with the tools to help them with
testing in cloud machines and to be able to sync workouts. Now that the program has been implemented,
it’s tracking drop offs, and looking at usage in order to further update the program to make sure that it’s
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Product Ops Is there a clear definition?

in the physical While I’ve seen many definitions around what product ops is, and what it’s not, we are all living in
an ever-changing world. And I feel that we need to constantly adapt at Virgin Active South Africa.

world Product ops is project management, design ops, technical ops, business ops, there’s no clear 100%
defined role.

Larger businesses with established teams, structures, processes and procedures may disagree,
and rightly so, as this is the reason that they are who they are. But for other businesses that are just
starting the journey into setting up product teams, you don’t know until you find your own rhythm.
The new ops role emerged with the widespread adoption of digital marketing, possibly. But for now,
I personally will keep on this hybrid journey and see where it takes me.

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Part 7
Learnings from
Launching Product Ops
Fancy watching this section of the report instead?
Just head here.

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Learnings from Launching Product Ops

With Gerisha Nadaraju, Former Product Ops Lead at Truelayer

Up until recently, I was the product operations lead at Truelayer. I joined the company about three years
ago as an employee in a business operations role. Then sort of moved into another team that was closer
to products that was called catalyst. From my learnings on catalyst, I ended up creating a product
operations function for the business.

So before I go into the different things that you can be doing and looking at when you’re launching
product ops, I thought it might be good to just share my product journey with you. To give you a little bit
more context as to why product operations ended up coming about at Truelayer while I was there, and
how I looked at it initially.

The backdrop for product ops

The company as a whole wanted to scale our products internationally, and really wanted to increase
the efficiency of doing this. We also needed access to information. When I say access to information,
this actually ended up being a huge part of product operations that I didn’t really fully understand at the
start. Basically...

• I was in a team global expansion, and we needed to get information to the product managers and
the engineers, in order to enable them to build off the product.

• We would be gathering that information from various external stakeholders, like banks, for example.

• We then needed to make sure that the information scaled within the product teams so that
everybody who needed it had the information they needed.

We ended up having a lot of internal stakeholders across the business, who are very much in customer
focused teams. So what became one of the important things about product ops is that we were actually
sort of this centralized control centre that was helping to facilitate the flow of information to different parts
of the business that needed it. So effectively, scaling product knowledge.

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Learnings from Product ops, for us, was going to be this team that sat at the intersection of product engineering and

Launching
customer facing teams. It existed to support the global expansion team at the time, and internal
stakeholders, and to improve the alignment, communication and processes around product

Product Ops
development, launch and iteration.

The three pillars

For the initial scope of the team, I borrowed heavily from the three pillars for product operations
and efficiency. And so those pillars were around strengthening product feedback loops around
operationalizing the product and around scaling product knowledge. That’s pretty broad, but I knew at
the time that we had certain needs and problems within that product team that needed to be solved.

So I then had certain things like product launches, testing strategy or knowledge database, and those
headings gave us a little bit more guidance. If you were actually trying to start from scratch with this in
your business, and you weren’t actually sure where you should be starting from, I think the best way to
approach it is to treat it as if you were launching a startup.

So the way that you’re launching product ops is effectively like launching a startup, but within your business.

Your first product ops hire

When you want to get buy in approval, which is effectively going on a road show like your fundraising,
you’re going to need to get a budget approved if you want to start hiring. And hiring is effectively looking
for your early employees here, because your first hire into that team is like your first hire into a company.

Some of the characteristics that you’re actually going to be looking for when you’re hiring for that first
prod ops person, could be quite different from what you would look for in an employee down the line.

Keep that in mind for identifying the need for product ops. I think in a startup, sometimes you know
you’re trying to grow fast, you’re racing. And oftentimes you’re going to have fires around you as you’re
pushing really hard. With operations, sometimes it feels like maybe people only realise the need for it
once they’re surrounded by fires.

I don’t think that’s how it should be. I think there is always a need for product ops in a scaling product
driven business.

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Learnings from Scaling your product or your team

Launching If you’re a product focused business, and you’re planning on scaling your product, or you’re planning on
scaling your team, then it’s highly likely that you would need product ops.

Product Ops What are some of the obvious signals?

If your business is scaling, or your product organization and your products are, you’re going to have
increased cross team dependencies, resulting in communication issues and possible problems finding
key information.

Maybe someone’s doing something and they’re getting really great info, but nobody else knows where
it’s coming from. But then actually, for consistency, each product manager or product team should also
be getting that same information. However, your product managers may be overloaded. There’s so
much information and requests they’ve got to do, they might not be able to get to all of it.

What could end up happening is that a product manager is actually working on stuff that is more
operational in nature, but they might not realise that because they’re not quite sure they haven’t worked
with prototypes before.

Product ops is there to help you scale

Product ops is effectively a function that is there to help your organization or team scale. And it’s there
to remove friction, and allow you to do that in a low friction environment, and also to just empower and
align teams and facilitate better communication.

Maybe you’re thinking about product ops, but you’re not actually sure where to start, and what they
could start helping with. Approach it by saying:

“What are the top problems right now for my product teams? What are the top challenges for the
product organisation as a whole? And what are the top problems for the entire business?”

If you actually do a bit of research on that and speak to people who are hitting up some of these areas, I
think it’s more likely that you’ll start seeing things around scaling the business and scaling product.

That just comes back to the fact that product operations could obviously help. So now you’re sort of
thinking about how do I get product reps in? And how should I structure this?
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Learnings from So where should you start?

Launching Every organization has a different sort of product structure, and it can be difficult to know where to start.
I think that if you started off with an embedded structure in the short term, and then move to a mix

Product Ops in the medium term. Then did a sort of centralized version in the long term, that is quite a nice way of
approaching it, and feels quite organic. And there’s also different pros and cons to each one.

When I say embedded, I mean that a product operations analyst or manager comes in, and they work
alongside product managers and engineers, and that cross functional product team on the ground. So
they’re trying to fix these issues to help the team ship the product. That then gives the product ops person
a really good sense of what’s happening on the ground.

They’re living and breathing these problems, So what they would want to do is actually figure out a solution
to solve a problem, so that they no longer have to do it. That’s where they start thinking about automation
or process flow, because they are experiencing the pain of what it’s like to be on the ground in a team.

In a centralized structure, product ops would be partnering with and looking at how product speaks to the
rest of the business. So you could have people working in a team trying to provide operational support to
them. Or you could have people at the product level, which would be a centralized product ops function,
there to oversee and help provide alignment and process to the rest of the product org.

It could be a hybrid mix of both, because you’ve got to be flexible and figure out what your business needs
are. And so obviously, being flexible, you might find that a product team might need to have an embedded
product ops in there, because that’s the nature of delivering that product.

Getting the buy in and approval from people on the ground and across the business is probably just as
important as the buy in from your CEO, or whoever your senior leader is in your business. This is because
product operations is such a cross functional type of team.

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Learnings from Getting the buy in and approval for product ops

Launching Something that helped me when it came to getting buy in and approval for product ops, is firstly to find
your internal product ops advocates within the business. These could be people who have worked with

Product Ops product operations before in the past in whichever roles they were in, and they really got the value of
product ops.

So they’re bought in and they want to help you get this off the ground and make it successful. And
I had people who were in product and business operations and customer success, who were really
excited by the idea of product operations. It was super helpful to have those people involved in the
interview process.

Another thing that you should do is make sure that you put together some sort of value proposition or
pitch deck. And it could be two to three slides, that just very simply state:

• This is what product ops is.

• This is where I think you could help.

• This is basically what the structure and the scope will be.

And do the above earlier than you actually think you need to, because people will ask for it. It’s really
helpful to be able to show them something.

Another important thing with buy in, is this relationship with product managers. Basically, what you want
to do is to be able to engage with product managers as you’re bringing up product ops, because some
people may have worked with product operations in the past. But a lot of them may not have and so
they might not understand the value that this can bring.

What was helpful was just outlining how I thought product operations should work. But then asking
product managers to let me know about the work they’ve got going on right now, where they actually
think someone could come in and help, and could that person be product operations. So in a way,
you’re kind of going on the journey together, to figure out this role.

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Learnings from You need to educate the business

Launching Something that was quite helpful in educating the business, was getting people aware that this was
actually a real thing. This was just putting up a bunch of logos of companies that were actually hiring

Product Ops for product operations at the time. It was a quick way of just getting a bit of credibility that this is a
real thing. And obviously, that might not be the case now, because we actually have a whole product
operation summit.

For the first hire that you make into this role, the person should be proactive first and foremost. They
should be a go getter, they should be solution driven. And they should definitely have a bias to action.

You’re going to be a new team that hasn’t proven itself before, and people aren’t aware of what you
can do in terms of value. So if you get somebody in who can not only spot problems, but then also solve
them, it means that you’re immediately going to be adding some value to the business. Getting some
quick wins and also showing that this could be a really positive function and could have huge potential
for the future.

The other thing that I was looking for in candidates was that they had product awareness, but that
came with an operational mindset. They didn’t need to be product managers before, but just interested
in product. And the most important thing to me was that they could think operationally, and they
enjoyed solving problems.

For collaboration, something that I look out for is empathy. So if a candidate shows that they have
empathy, you can sort of tell that they’re able to put themselves in the shoes of other people, or the
customer. And so that goes a long way when you are communicating with other teams.

So what I ended up with was effectively people who were almost on this product to operations
spectrum, where you had people who are really strong in product. And I think those people kind of
enjoyed or would enjoy the embedded structure more, because you are working directly with product
teams, with the product manager, the engineers, you’re unblocking the team as fast as you can, and
you are shipping the product.

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Learnings from Then you had people on the other side of the spectrum who really enjoy operations. Their mind goes

Launching
straight to mapping out things and processes in a lucid chart, and you are trying to figure out what is
the best way to implement processes so that you enable scaling to take place. And you’re doing sort of

Product Ops coordination and alignment.

I think people who maybe prefer operations more, are better suited to that centralized structure and
way of doing things. But I also had a team that could lean into both, so even if there was a strong
product, they could lean into ops and vice versa.

Set up for success when launching product ops

Firstly, clarify the need for this in your business. I ended up speaking to a lot of people who had done
product operations in different businesses. Initially when I was having those chats, I very quickly realised
that everybody has a different definition for this. So make it specific to your business and appoint
someone to run with this.

Whether that’s somebody internal in your organisation or not, just make sure that somebody is dedicated
to leading and looking at this and thinking about what this will look like and how you launch it.

I think that product ops just has the potential to impact the whole product so much that it makes sense
that it goes to the Chief Product Officer. And remember, your first hire is key. So definitely try to get in
a proactive problem solver if you can. I know that’s what ended up happening when I was hiring. That
would be a good place to start. If you have to look at one thing that stands out for the first time.

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Part 8
In Summary

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In summary
It’s clear from the report that product ops is a function we’ll see more and more demand for as
its impact and importance continues to be poven. The pressure to innovate faster, be more agile
and efficient is driving organizations to invest in the role, and ensure it becomes a critical part of
product strategy.

The role helps reduce the cognitive load, fosters a stronger culture around best practices,
ensures planning cycles are on track, and connects the day-to-day activities of product teams
to allow organizations to run at scale. It pulls everything together, but can also take some of the
administrative burden, to free up bandwidth and optimize efficiency.

A huge thank you to all those that took part in the survey, and to all the experts who contributed
their insights.

We look forward to seeing what the future

holds for the emerging product ops function.
And if you want to get involved with the
discussion, you can join our growing slack
community, and sign up for a
PLA membership plan.

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Part 9
Contributors

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Contributors
A special thank you

Kam Dadfar, Director of Product Operations at Onfido

Martin Järve, Manager, Product Operations Engineering at Twilio Inc.

Kevin Sakamoto, Director of Digital Product Operations at Dollar Shave Club

Gerisha Nadaraju, Former Product Ops Lead at Truelayer

Christian MacLean, Director of Product Operations and Merchant Product Strategy at Auctane

Bjorn Simonson, Senior Product Operations Manager at iZettle

Marielle Velander, Product Operations Lead at Dashlane

Sandra Juras, Senior Product Operations Manager at Freeletics

Christian Rahn, Senior Product Operations Manager at Better.com

Elia Ahadi, Technical Program Manager at Keybank

Alfonso Amaya Parra, Global Group Product Operations Manager, Uber

Chris Hogan, VP Product Operations at HubSpot

Marie Gaumont, Director of Product Operations, PayFit

Sharmin Abdo, Product Operations Lead, Receipt Bank

Asher Jacobson, Product Operations Manager, Virgin Active

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Meet the PLA team behind this report:

Heather James
Founder at Product-Led Alliance
Heather is the founder of Product-Led Alliance and is a passionate believer
that behind every successful product is an even more awesome product
team. Her belief in the power of people is what led her to bring together like-
minded folks to learn, interact, and share in each other’s passion and energy.

Adam Bennett
Senior Copywriter at Product-Led Alliance
Adam is our senior copywriter here at PLA and has a passion for producing
rich, stylish and captivating content. If you see specific topics you’d like us
to cover, or another report you’d like to see published, get in touch. He’s
always open to new ideas and feedback.

Jon Sayer
Graphic Designer
Jon is our graphic designer and looks at all our design requirements. He’s
responsible for the layout and visual elements in this report and is always
happy to hear your thoughts!

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