Explaining the Importance of Product Operations in Tech 🖥️

Many people don’t even know what “product operations,” or “product ops” for short, is.

Product-related roles such as product management, technical program management, and business analytics are more well-known than the ever-growing product operations (Also known as product ops). Those within this field are usually known as a “product operation analyst,” “product operations manager,” or something similar.

While it’s fair to say not every organization requires a product operations analyst, it’s important to understand what they do. While the title can be self-explanatory, I feel that their impact is usually unrecognized, and the role itself is more deserving of a spotlight 💡.

What is Product Ops?

People in product ops are usually the facilitators of multiple product teams, who strive to remove the inevitable friction that they will typically encounter. You’ll often find definitions such as this one, which it states that they optimize the intersection of product, engineering, and customer success. Other explanations, such as the one from Product School, describe them as facilitators of “easy communication and sharing of resources and data between departments.”

Now obviously, as with many product-related roles, responsibilities defer from team to team. I’ve heard that product ops at companies like Uber and Amazon do things way differently than those at Google; similarly when we compare mid-sized companies or start-ups. I’ll do my best to summarize their general responsibilities the best I can:

• 🖱️They track all release dates for various features across all teams that are assigned to them and create dashboards, slide decks, and schedules when necessary to track progress in a presentable format.

• 🤝They work together with product managers, leadership teams, marketing, and engineering directors to strategize the best product development processes that make sense from both an engineering and business perspective.

• 🖥️ They determine the right roadmap and tracking tools needed for every product team to function and develop most efficiently.

• 📌They help manage the dirty weeds of structuring and tracking operational requirements, such as KRs, quarterly reviews, and other internal necessities.

Lastly, I want to point out that because the role of product ops varies so greatly across product teams, many nuanced tasks and ideas that don’t get as much visibility are driven by them as well. These can include enabling hidden product managers to receive the visibility they deserve, experimenting with new workflows and operational processes, and even taking on duties related to project management 🫡.

Because of these various lines of impact, and other “trickle-down” effects that positively impact product and leadership teams, product ops have become a mainstream function across the tech landscape — especially mid-to-large-sized companies with modern product cultures established. This leads to my next point — just how valuable are product ops?

Why is Product Ops Needed?

It truly boils down to a single question: how can leaders tell if their product managers (and teams) are operating efficiently and appropriately, and are set up for success?

While I personally believe most early-stage start-ups would find more value from a product manager or COO who can wear many hats (or just general technical leaders who can drive product vision), product ops become instantly recognized the moment a team scales and their modern processes continue to suffer growing pains. Organizations that grow rapidly find increasing challenges with tracking product development efficiency, or even validating whether their product teams are truly doing the right thing to succeed. To truly track all operational processes (basically streams of value within a business) at scale, someone needs to step in to decide which processes to implement, and then maintain them — otherwise, product managers and other team members would have to step in to do it, which isn’t a great use of their time. Without that someone, a large gap emerges as friction develops between product teams, their stakeholders, and execs 😵‍💫.

Typically, this need becomes more apparent within tech companies that grow to the point where more than 10 product managers are needed. Think about it: you have multiple product managers who tend to be siloed to their own features or development processes, and each team owns its metrics for success (both internally and as a business). The moment it’s time to determine dependencies, communicate updates to the rest of the company, or decide on the best tracking methods, who can help establish the groundwork or foundations to make it all happen smoothly? Product Operations can 🫡.

But when it comes to stakeholder management and reporting to leadership, this is where product ops really shines (at least in my opinion). Here’s why.

Theoretically, many product books and frameworks suggest the idea of lean product discovery, prototyping, and delivery. They call on the support of leadership to empower product managers to make tough calls and facilitate communication in an expert yet tailored manner for many audiences. Realistically, however, life isn’t usually that simple. You have chaos burning everywhere, or within a single domino-tip away. You have multiple teams who don’t know what other teams are doing on a day-to-day. You have leadership teams who need to manage high expectations from the board. You have changing requirements getting thrown in all directions. You have people at higher levels who demand varying degrees/styles of reporting or tracking. And of course, you have by far the most important asset to manage carefully in operational readiness: your customers. What’s the most efficient way to track, process, and report on their feedback? Product managers have the duty of understanding this feedback and strategizing the roadmap accordingly, but not every team will have time to determine what tool to use to collect or engage with customers, or how frequently the feedback should be reported to other stakeholders. Again, product operations can be there to save the day.

Product ops is an ever-growing field, but it’s safe to say that they’ve found their home within most modern tech companies that are built to scale. As a product manager at Planview, the presence of my product operations analyst means I can focus less on the tactics of tracking and reporting (especially for leadership), and more on strategy and execution — which I’m hired to do.

It’s time that product operations garnered the respect they deserve 😎.

About Me

My name is Kasey, AKA J.X. Fu (pen name). I’m passionate about writing, technology, AI, gaming, and storytelling 😁.

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