What is Product Operations? Part I

Hi! Thank you for checking out my inaugural blog post.

If you happen to follow me on LinkedIn or Twitter, you’ll know that I’ve spent the best part of the last three years talking and writing about Product Operations - and I’m delighted to be doing so. But every time I tell someone what I do, I inevitably get the same question: “So… what is Product Operations exactly?”

You might be forgiven for thinking that this means I just haven’t reached enough people yet, but this question doesn’t only come from folks who are brand new to the discipline. Even those who’ve spent a considerable amount of time grappling with the topic - and even those who’ve heard me speak or read one of my articles - approach me with the same inquiry. And I know I’m not alone in this. Most Product Ops professionals I speak to have a very similar experience.

Being a freelance consultant and coach, I’ve had to find snappy but accurate ways of describing what I do to prospective clients and that hasn’t always been easy. In fact, my own definition of what Product Ops is changed as I learned more about the discipline and about what makes it successful.

Easy vs Effective

In the beginning of my Product Ops career, I often referred to it as “making PMs lives easier”. That’s a great value proposition, isn’t it? After all, if my core purpose is to make your life easier why wouldn’t you want me on your team?

The truth I’ve come to realise though is that that isn’t always true. I do make some things easier, yes. But oftentimes I’ll have to make things quite a bit harder before they can get easier. I might ask you to change how (or where) you do a particular task, I might ask you to do something you’ve never done before, I might even ask you to stop doing something you’re very passionate about. None of those things are easy, but many of them are necessary.

Nowadays (and you’ll see this reflected in my recent talks and on my website) I like to focus on what Product Operations is there to enable. And to me, that’s Product Management excellence. So instead of saying “I make your life as easy as possible”, I now say “I help you do your best work”. A subtle but important distinction.

The Product Operations Manifesto

When I orchestrated the creation of the Product Operations Manifesto I was really worried that us co-authors wouldn’t be able to see eye to eye when it came down to creating a one-sentence definition of Product Ops. After all, all our lived experiences were so different - would we be able to come to a consensus that really resonated with and rang true for all of us?

To my surprise, the answer was yes. In fact, the whole process was actually a lot less difficult than I had previously imagined. But this is exactly what makes Product Operations as a discipline so interesting.

If you ask ten Product Operations Managers to describe their past week, you’ll come away with ten (possibly vastly) different answers. And none of them would be inherently wrong. However, if you ask these ten people to describe their mission, their values, and what gets them out of bed in the morning chances are you’ll get something quite homogenous.

I like to think of Product Operations as expanding foam. We expand into whichever gaps are present in your organisation, so it’s natural that we might all have very different shapes. But we’re all made of the same stuff! So while Product Ops Manager A might be grappling with introducing a new roadmapping tool to the organisation, Product Ops Manager B might help their Heads of Product to come up with a PM leveling system, and Product Ops Manager C is investigating ways of getting sales closer to product, our values are the same. Our principles are the same. What we ultimately want to achieve is the same.

Broad by Nature

The Product Operations Manifesto defines Product Operations as follows:

“Product Operations empowers product organisations to collectively, effectively and efficiently drive the most meaningful outcomes for customers”.

Still don’t know what Product Ops is all about? I thought so. wink

To be honest, I’ve often looked at this definition and wondered if it was too broad. While it gives the reader a good sense of what Product Operations aims to achieve, it doesn’t really talk about what the day-to-day of executing that look like, where in the organisation it sits, or who exactly it serves.

But here’s the thing: Product Operations is broad by nature.

Is this a satisfying answer? No. Does this help untangle the web of interconnectedness that lies between coaching, leadership, product, change, and enablement? Not at all.

But it’s the truth.

Defining Product Operations is a messy affair because Product Operations itself is messy! A discipline with the ultimate goal to facilitate great product work cannot be spoken about without considering the environment in which it operates. Ultimately, Product Operations exists to remove barriers to product management excellence, but what those barriers look like varies from company to company.

If I asked you to describe the ideal shoe, wouldn’t you consider the occasion? The weather? Your shoe size? Would you be able to decisively and definitively tell me that the ideal shoe is a pair of size eight black leather brogues? What if I needed to run a marathon? What if I worked on a farm? What if I’m a size 4?

And just like we might define the ideal shoe as one that fits the wearer, the occasion, is weather-sensible and reasonably matches the given outfit, so might we define Product Operations as a discipline that empowers product organisations to collectively, effectively and efficiently drive the most meaningful outcomes for customers.

Still not Enough

I’m gonna be brutally honest here: I think some people are waiting for Product Operations to go away so that they never really have to learn what it’s actually all about. And as something that seemed to come out of nowhere and suddenly exploded in popularity (or should it be notoriety?) I can understand why many people feel that it’s a fad that will die down soon.

The thing is, Product Operations has always existed and it will continue to exist wherever product work gets done. Whether we get the job done by creating a team that looks at the systems that enable great product work holistically or whether we expect individual Product Managers to take charge as and when needed - Product Ops work will always need to get done. The creation of a role called ‘Product Operations’ didn’t magically make new work appear. It simply made us look at these tasks in new, interconnected ways.

As an advocate for Product Operations I feel that it’s my duty to help people understand what Product Ops could do for their organisation. And while part of that duty revolves around spreading awareness on the reasons why this is such a hard-to-define discipline - something I hope I’ve been able to do with this write-up today - I also always strive to be as concrete as possible.

So if today’s blog post didn’t answer all your questions, don’t fret. I’m planning on being as specific as I possibly can in my next one, where we’ll look at the actual tasks and topics a Product Operations Manager might tackle in their day-to-day.

Is there a particular topic or area you’d like me to focus on next? Get in touch and let me know!

And if you’ve enjoyed this article, feel free to buy me a coffee.

Thank you for reading, and until next time
Antonia