I recently got brought in for a debate – the co-founder believes strongly that product ops should be integrated into the role of product leadership, but the head of product was pushing for a separate role. So I joined in and played devil’s advocate to both of them.

Afterwards, I realized how much ground we covered that wasn’t included in my article on this topic. So I gave it an upgrade.

Another product management passion of mine is the importance of understanding product finances. I’m excited to be talking to Matt Long, Sr. Director of Product at Duolingo, about how he thinks about pricing and packaging on November 1. Register and learn more.

Hope to see you there,
Jenny

Product operations teams aren’t for everyone. Are they for you?

A brief decision-making guide for separating the product operations role

I opened our discussion with this disclaimer. I had been brought in to help a co-founder and the head of product gain clarity on a hot debate they had been having. My role was to play devil’s advocate to both sides – whether to invest in their first product ops hire or hire another product manager.

It was clear that the two of them had been circling this topic for quite some time and were both feeling frustration. My job was to make sure they had the data they needed to come to resolution.

We were all in agreement about the most important thing: Your company is already doing product operations work. In their case, it fell on their head of product. At other companies I’ve seen the PM on the team do it as another part of their day-to-day.

Plenty of companies without product ops specialists are thriving. Plenty of companies with product ops specialists are struggling. And vice-versa.

We discussed five key considerations that make some companies better suited to separate product ops teams than others: scale, work in progress, degree of product complication, communication challenges, and the product culture vision.

Scale

This is the most common reason why companies introduce separate product ops teams. As the number of PMs on a team grows, maintaining the tools, systems, and training for product managers to succeed becomes too much work.

When the company is large enough, having someone dedicated to improving each PM’s productivity, even if it’s only a few percentage points, makes sense from an ROI standpoint.

The point at which scale kicks in is different for every company. Here’s what I told them:

Almost every large company has separate people fulfilling product ops responsibilities. As Christy Lutz explained so clearly:

They might have product analysts, system admins, design ops, project managers, program managers, internal communication specialists, and many other titles.

There isn’t a clear number or metric for when a company is over this threshold. But once there’s more work that needs to be done than anyone on the team can currently do, it’s probably time to make the hire.

Work in progress

Some companies are excellent at keeping focused on their top priorities. In others, the product team is constantly juggling a long list of things to keep track of.

For the companies with strong focus, they are more likely to get by without product ops assistance because it’s easier to make room alongside their narrow list to get the glue work done in the company. They will likely be able to make space, execute, and move on.

For the companies with high work in progress, expecting these stretched product leaders to add operations work is unrealistic. They’re already struggling to keep up and additional responsibilities will fall by the wayside.

You might be okay with some ops work not happening because there are more important things to do. Explicitly deprioritize it as a team, rather than just expecting individuals to attempt to juggle everything at the same time and feel bad about failing.

Product complication

There are multiple ways to think about highly complicated products – examples include regulated industries or heavy real-world interaction. The type of complication defines what kind of product ops support might be needed.

For highly regulated companies, product ops can assist with navigating through it. For instance, if a product requires FDA regulatory approval, product ops can help set up systems to make sure PMs understand when they need to loop in compliance, legal, and other departments in order to move forward.

For companies with lots of real-world interaction, ops can help connect the data from what’s happening in the real world with what the product team is trying to achieve. A food delivery company did a great job of using product ops to bring the physical and digital worlds closer.

Communication slowdowns

When the common answer on the team is “I’m waiting to hear back about X”, it adds up. If everyone is always waiting for responses, it means constant interruption of work and stop/start environments. Product ops can help this by increasing documentation and making it easier for everyone on and off the product team to know where to get the answers without a wait.

Product ops can also focus on removing unnecessary meetings from calendars by replacing them with dashboards and async means of communication. Fewer meetings means that when two people do need to connect, it’s more likely that they will actually be able to find time immediately.

Every decision delay adds up – cutting even a day from every back-and-forth compounds to much faster decisions. Claire Vo calls this increasing the “clock speed” of an organization.

Product culture strategy

Every company has either an implicit or explicit vision for what kind of product team culture they’re trying to build.

If achieving that vision requires big changes from the status quo, it’s far more likely to succeed if someone owns the vision, strategy, and roadmap. A separate product ops team might be advised.

If the vision is reasonably close to where things are today, then expecting the team to adjust their way to that future culture is more reasonable. Keeping it integrated will likely lead to success.

This is a strategic decision

Whether or not to separate out the product ops role depends on the company and your unique needs. It’s ultimately a strategic choice of how you want to shape the role of product leadership in your organization and how product interacts with the rest of the company.

I don't think the team I talked with found full resolution during our debate. But at least now they can look at the list and see what makes the most sense based on their company characteristics.

The one thing I am not neutral about – be deliberate about the choice. If you’re not going to separate out the role, there are three critical steps I recommend:

1. Invest in a slightly higher ratio of product leaders to product people. The work of product ops still needs to be done and is most likely to fall upon leaders’ shoulders. Staff to free up leaders’ time.
2. Identify the product ops work that is being done. Recognize and reward product ops work as valuable contributions to your team. By bringing it into the light, you’ll encourage team members to continue to make the investments in it in the future.
3. Bring in outside help when it makes sense. Even when the most of the prod ops work is getting done by the current team, you may still have challenges that are beyond their capacity. Have a strategy to call in some additional help to get those challenges solved so you don’t end up with organizational debt.

Don’t let product ops happen in your company by accident. Whether through hiring or creating space for the work, make sure that there is a vision, strategy, and roadmap around the work.

Thank you to Christy Lutz for your feedback to make sure I was being clear throughout and being a cheerleader to help me through a rough week.