Among aspiring software companies focusing on building their ideal cast of Product and CX roles, there is a growing awareness of the need for a new role. This emerging role doesn’t squarely fit into the traditional product team structure. And regardless of where you stand with the ongoing debate about the responsibilities of product managers and CX/UX leaders, very few companies would argue against the need for a role that is responsible for actually supporting the product team to free them up to be better PMs. I’m talking about the need for Product Operations.
Doing a quick google search on “What is product ops” will return a handful of well written articles by some of the most popular product-led companies and thought leaders. It won’t take you more than 10 minutes to read those articles and come away feeling well-informed. They all suggest about 80% of the same thing and for the most part, make a compelling argument for the need of a product ops function in a high-performing software organization.
Here’s how we’ve chosen to define the set of responsibilities for the Product Ops function in our startup.
Product Metrics and Analytics
- Organize and report on product-related data, including performance metrics and user behavior analytics.
- Provide insights to guide strategic product decisions.
- Collaborate with stakeholders to build data-driven roadmaps and strategies.
Process and Tools
- Optimize product development processes to be more customer-centric, including usability testing, user acceptance testing, and Alpha tests.
- Collaborate with dev teams to implement and maintain efficient development workflows and ensure quality releases.
- Select, implement, and manage software tools needed to produce product metrics and insights
Customer and UX Research
- Conduct customer research to identify unmet needs and customer preferences.
- Gather and analyze customer feedback to inform product decisions.
- Collaborate with product teams to incorporate customer insights into feature development.
This are the team objectives and I realize that it overlaps with the responsibilities of unique sets of teams in larger organizations. This list is indicative of a smaller company size ( < 50 employees) where people are still wearing several hats. A startup company, if you will. For example, there is no doubt that customer and UX research efforts should eventually be a self-sufficient and independently managed team with its own set of objectives and specialized roles.
Especially for a smaller software company, assigning these responsibilities to a product ops role, rather than spreading them out among PMs, results in some efficiencies.
Efficiency 1
Managing all the tools and software needed (like analytics, digital onboarding, BI tools) to produce product metrics and insights for the product team can be time-consuming. They need constant attention if you’re going to actually get the data you need for insights that drive product decisions.
Efficiency 2
Sometimes product teams can get so close to their processes and acheiving greatness in their roles, that basic software development tasks can take a backseat. For example, managing the cross-functional communications needed for preparing an upcoming release often boils down to basic projectmanagement. But wouldn’t you rather have your PMs already looking at the next sprint, driving alignment with stakeholders, working with designers and studying the product data that’s been made accessible?
Efficiency 3
Good CX/UX research is vital to build products that customers love. This function has been under attack for quite some time and as mentioned before, there are daily battles in online communities discussing topics like who should be responsible for CX/UX research. Wherever you stand with that argument the reality is that every company is in a unique stage in their life and for your company it may make sense to have CX research fall into the hands of Product Ops role. Especially if Product Operations is slotted into the CX team. Ideally the CX function will grow and specialized UX researchers and analysts will be hired to fill roles. Either way you slice it, feeding PMs with research data saves time. Then you can have PMs conduct simpler customer interviews for anecdotal conversations that help support the data and insights that are coming to them.
As a company’s product team(s) grow, it feels inevitable that they will find the right time to carve out a niche for product ops. In most organizations, people are already doing these jobs but there just isn’t a name for it. There aren’t clearly stated objectives or a vision for how these jobs should be performed. There aren’t clear expectations for someone tasked with these responsibilities.
For smaller software shops, crafting your product operations function will bring clarity to things like:
- “Who is responsible gathering and reporting on Voice of Customer data?”
- “Who is supposed to manage all these analytics and BI tools?”
- “Who is supposed to build the infrastructure to feed product, sales, and marketing teams with data?”
Over time I’m sure the list of responsibilities will change as highly specialized roles are needed to push initiatives forward and achieve excellence in these areas. But start small and wear as many hats as needed to make it to our next growth stage.
Do you have a Product Ops team at your company? What are they tasked with and how are they structured alongside your product and CX teams?
