THE RISE OF

PRODUCT
OPS
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Introduction
Product operations (product ops) isn’t necessarily new, but it
isn’t exactly commonplace, either. For technology companies
that are scaling, it can be the difference between successful
growth and growing pains. It’s simultaneously novel (applying
the ruthless efficiency of sales operations to the R&D function)
and familiar (what successful company doesn’t have an ops
function?). The biggest takeaway?
You don’t hear about product ops as often as you hear about This is a critical time for product ops.
marketing operations (marketing ops), sales operations (sales And the sooner companies start to
ops), or their amalgam revenue operations (RevOps). Even recognize this, the better for them.
development operations (DevOps) is prevalent throughout
tech. But we think this could change, and product ops could
soon find itself on equal footing with its popular predecessors.

To better understand the state of product ops, what the role

entails, why it matters, and where it’s going, we partnered
with Product Collective to interview professionals from the
field, whether they perform the function themselves or work
at companies with a product ops department.
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01
Section

PRODUCT OPS

PRODUCT
What is product ops?
At its core, product ops is the intersection of product
(including product design), engineering, and customer
success (CS). It exists to support the R&D team and
their go-to-market counterparts to improve alignment,

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communication, and processes around product

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development, launch, and iteration.

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EN
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But every company defines product ops differently, likely due to the novelty of the
role, and the fact that every team, product, and business has unique needs.

Product ops is about setting I define product ops as If you’re building an audio system
up a system in the product building the connective and the volume knob is the product,
organization to get the right tissue between the teams then the equalizer settings are the
data — both quantitative and building your technology product ops function. You can turn
qualitative — from the right and the teams who interact up the volume, but the settings
places into the process for with your users. — the tweaks, the configurations
creating better products. needed for that perfect product
Blake Samic ///
Head of Product Operations
experience — is what I define as
Melissa Perri /// Founder
product ops.

Varun Ramamurthy Dinakur ///

Founder & CEO
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Product ops’ specific responsibilities can also look very different at different organizations, depending on what’s most important
for the business. Consider these three different models for product ops:

Outcomes-driven

At Uber, product ops is responsible for gathering insights and scoping out the business
needs at the very beginning of the product development process (which often includes
going out and talking to users), as well as at launch time, working with their ops
counterparts around the world to execute launches and go-to-market strategy.

Efficiency-focused

At Stripe, product ops exists to deliver more value to more users faster, and has three
areas of focus: strengthening product feedback loops, operationalizing products, and
scaling product knowledge across the organization.

Customer-centric

When Theresa Baker started in product ops at Comcast for their Digital Home product, her
role was more of a customer experience function that provided insight into the end-to-end
customer experience through a product lens.
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I see product ops reporting to the head of product

management, and existing as a shared resource
across the product management organization.

Robert Hatta /// Talent Partner

Where does product ops

fit in an organization?
If it’s a defined role, product
ops typically sits in the product
management team or in an adjacent When I think about product ops, it’s the role itself
function that also reports up to the
— which for us is the product operations manager
head of product.
— but it’s also the team of product ops people that
are connected with each other. By working together,
it allows us to drive a lot of really interesting and
impactful initiatives across the entire company.

Blake Samic /// Head of Product Operations

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The shadow product operative

Some may think of product ops as strictly a role that companies hire for. Others may view it as a skillset that any product
professional can (and should) hone. We see it as both — product-led organizations should designate someone to be responsible
for product ops, but, at the same time, all members of the product team should develop an operational mindset.

According to LinkedIn, product operations is related to a sprawling set of roles, including growth product manager, product
development associate, business operations analyst, product manager, and customer impact manager all appearing as results, in
addition to product operations manager and analyst. The dust appears to still be settling.

+8% YoY

5,700
There are nearly 5,700 LinkedIn users
with a product operations title — an 2018
increase of 8% in the last year alone. But
even more noteworthy is that product
operations as a skill on LinkedIn is up 80%
year over year. The dust may be settling,
2019
+80%
LinkedIn users with a but there certainly is a lot of it. LinkedIn users with
product ops title product ops as a skill

Mr. Hatta summarized the state of product operations well when he said, “There’s clearly a need for this function, and it’s probably a need
that a lot of companies who have scaled successfully have solved for, but they might just be calling it a variety of different things.”

What can we learn from this? Although the product operations title isn’t as concentrated as other ops roles, product professionals recognize
that ops is on the rise, and are starting to position themselves for the role. The next question is … why now?
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02
Section

Why is product ops on

the rise, and why now? I think that product ops is definitely growing in
importance, especially in the sense that tech
We believe product ops is on the rise for a few
companies are growing faster now. From my
reasons: heightened expectations on the customer
experience, the rise in ops roles in general, the perspective, it’s not that product ops hasn’t been
growing availability of product usage data, and, important in the past, but that companies haven’t
most notably, the enormous advantage product-led come to the conclusion that it makes sense to
companies have over their competition. Studies group these responsibilities into one role or team,
have found product-led companies’ profit margin
and that it’s actually more efficient that way.
exceeds peers by upwards of 527 percent — and
product-led companies are disproportionately Blake Samic /// Head of Product Operations
likely to employ a product ops leader or even an
entire team.
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The evolution of the product experience The “other ops”

For product-led companies, the product isn’t just part of the In the last five years alone, there has been a growing conversation
customer experience — it is the experience. From trial and around the importance of operations functions. Regardless of
purchase all the way through onboarding, expansion, and referrals, which team they serve, the reason for an ops function usually boils
product becomes the vehicle for all of those stages. And product down to three key outcomes: better visibility and collaboration,
ops is central to the optimization of that experience, especially increased efficiency, and more output.
as the product development lifecycle continues to evolve.
Since we see product ops as the latest addition, it’s helpful to think
In the past, product managers struggled with projects taking way about the ops roles that are already widespread and accepted:
too long (or worse: not being completed at all) and coming in
over budget. This notion gave rise to the agile method, enabling
product teams to ship projects on time using shorter sprints to
continuously iterate. Then the question arose: how do we get
this in our customers’ hands faster? The formation of DevOps SALES OPS REVOPS MARKETING OPS DEVOPS
eliminated this friction and companies were able to release
products more often — shipping products weekly, or even daily,
Jeff Bussgang, a VC who wrote a post on how sales operations is
with a single press of a button.
the secret to scaling for startups, captures the rise in ops roles
perfectly: “As companies stabilize their business models and
Which brings us to now. As teams build and release more, how
find product-market fit, they begin to adjust from a hunch-driven
do they know if they’re building the right things? And how do
operating model, where decisions are made by the founders
they ensure users know about everything they’re building? That’s
in large part on gut instinct, to a metrics-driven model, where
where we see product ops coming in: optimizing the product
decisions are made by professional managers based on data.”
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.
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The rise of data

With more data available than ever before, we’re in the middle of what some are calling the “datafication” of everything. Tech
organizations are realizing that using data to drive business decisions is no longer a reach goal, but a must do — making an operational
function critical to analyzing data and turning it into actionable insights.

And since product data is the cleanest data in any organization (there’s no opportunity for it to get altered by human-input error or
messy append services), it can be even more impactful for the business. Gartner predicts that by 2021, 75% of software providers
will rely on insights from embedded software analytics to inform product decisions and measure customer health.

With today’s market Now, we’re past that hurdle

conditions and the sheer of ‘I can’t get data out of my
availability and rise in system,’ and we have so much
popularity of data — I really data in all different places
think there’s a correlation — and I think product ops is
there with the rise in about pulling it all together to
product ops. synthesize that data and turn
it into insights.
Shelly Perry /// Operating Partner
Melissa Perri /// Founder
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03
Section

The product ops role

We’ve identified five core areas of the product ops role. They include:

1. Tools
Ops pros tend to take ownership of tool selection, integration,
and maintenance of their team’s tech stack. And product ops
is no different.

MANAGE THE PRODUCT TECH STACK

Product ops owns the product team’s tech stack, manages

relationships with vendors, and administers these tools to the
wider team. Here’s a visualization of many of the tools (and
vendors) used by product managers today:

ESTABLISH BEST PRACTICES INTERNALLY

Product ops is also responsible for technology selection,

establishing best practices for usage, and ensuring team
members are using their tools effectively.

ProductCraft
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2. Data MAINTAIN DATA INTEGRITY, CLEANLINESS,

AND ORGANIZATION
With this increase in tools comes a corresponding increase
in the amount of available data. The challenge is surfacing, For a data-driven product strategy to be effective, there
organizing, and analyzing that data in a thoughtful way. needs to be a strong foundation put in place so that the data
is accurate, easy to understand, and useful. Putting a single
person or team in charge of this helps eliminate problems like
data duplication, or product managers not knowing where to
Product ops is about helping people
go for certain information.
better understand the power of the
combination of multiple data sources Melissa Perri explained this well with an example, “In an ideal
— that’s what drives the business world, a product manager should be able to log into some
forward. One by itself isn’t enough. sort of system, ask a question and get the answer if that data
is available, or be able to request the data from product ops.”
Shelly Perry /// Operating Partner
Product ops might also partner with product managers to
set up the measurement and reporting structure for product
releases, and then make sure that data is fed into the right
places.

To me, product ops is all about

answering the question ‘How
do we get product data into the
process for making product strategy
decisions?’

Melissa Perri /// Founder

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PERFORM DATA ANALYSIS

Product ops not only plays a critical role in collecting data, but also in using it to surface insights that will inform product decisions.
One example of this could be reconciling usage data with customer feedback, whether it’s passed along through customer success
and sales team members or submitted by the users directly to the product team.

It’s not the usage data by itself. It’s the usage If you’re a product leader entering a planning
data, plus the financials, the movement in the cycle, you should be looking at things like usage
market, your win-loss areas, what’s coming in data, but you also want to look at what has
from support, what your competitors are doing. been submitted by your users — the pain points
[...] It’s this massive correlation of the data that they’ve mentioned in support tickets, or through
actually makes a difference — it’s not just about your sales team and account managers. You
the one data source you might already have in need to have good systems in place to capture
front of you alone. all of that information, structure it, organize it,
and tag it, so you can then surface it at the right
Shelly Perry /// Operating Partner
times in really high impact ways.

Blake Samic /// Head of Product Operations

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What kinds of data does product ops care about?

Product stickiness (DAU/MAU ratio, WAU/MAU ratio)

Product usage data
Breadth (e.g. number of active users for a given customer)
Depth (e.g. feature usage)
Frequency (e.g. number of logins for a given customer)
Feature adoption rates PROVIDE DATA TO NECESSARY
Feature retention rates STAKEHOLDERS
NPS
Of course the value of this data hinges on
Leading indicators of conversion, renewal, and expansion
it reaching the right people at the right
Top feature requests time. Product ops needs to set up effective
Product delivery predictability workflows and cadences for delivering this
Product bugs (e.g. broken down by feature and product usage) information (and avoid just fielding one-off
requests) — for example, supplying product
Product performance
usage data to customer success, allowing
Support tickets them to pre-identify at-risk accounts.
Customer feedback
User research data
Win/loss analysis
Churn data
Cost data
Revenue data
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3. Experimentation
According to Robert Hatta, one of the biggest benefits of
having a defined product ops role is eliminating friction in
the experimentation process, which allows product teams to
run more experiments. For an organization looking to scale,
this is essential. KEEP TRACK OF ALL EXPERIMENTS

At the most basic level, product ops should keep track of every
active experiment, and make sure they aren’t overlapping
or interfering with each other. Having this single source of
truth is also beneficial for the broader team, since it acts as
a resource that they can refer to at any time.

Think of product ops as two roles at an airport:

running launch logistics on the ground to STREAMLINE SEQUENCING AND IMPLEMENTATION
make sure all the planes are taking off in the OF EXPERIMENTS
most efficient way possible, and performing air
traffic control to make sure the planes aren’t all Product ops should also be creating processes to help make
running into each other once they’re in the air. experimentation more efficient, for example by establishing
workflows, putting together documentation, segmenting user
Robert Hatta /// Talent Partner populations, and making sure the data you’re getting back is
clean and accurate.

In an article for First Round Capital, the co-founders of Reddit

note that their product ops team is also responsible for making
sure every experiment aligns with larger company goals.
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4. Strategy
Processes will differ depending on how teams are structured, but it’s imperative for product ops to align with other teams across the
company, and be the inter-departmental link that drives collaboration around the product. By providing product insights, product
ops works with other teams to identify areas for improvement and inform business decisions.

PARTNER WITH OTHER TEAMS ACROSS THE COMPANY

Product ops is a key partner for teams like RevOps, DevOps,

CS, marketing, sales, and of course, the wider product team. Working with marketing to hone persona definitions,
These relationships will vary by company, but here’s what it ensuring the leads generated match the characteristics
could look like: of the company’s most successful users.

Aligning with RevOps to ensure product data is incorporated Monitoring customer feedback channels and then
into business health metrics, especially with respect to feeding that information back to the CS team and
trial conversions, renewals, and expansions. product owners.

Defining performance experience metrics in partnership

Partnering with DevOps to advise on roadmapping,
with the quality assurance team to better measure
based on data and feedback from the field.
success around the product experience.
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SCALE PRODUCT KNOWLEDGE

Since they are in sync with teams across the company, product ops becomes the
best resource for things like product information, new learnings, and the state
At Comcast, the reason Theresa Baker
of the roadmap — and they should be proactive about sharing these insights.
stepped into her role in product ops
was to help ensure tighter alignment
Product ops can be expected to answer:
between product and the teams (i.e.
sales, marketing, and CS) responsible What are the top priorities across all product teams?
for preparing the organization for new Where does X fall on the product roadmap?
product launches.
What are the top X needs from Y customers?
What are the top X at-risk customers?
Matt Shroder explained that at Uber,
Where is the discovery/feature/release brief for X feature?
each product manager has a product
ops person who they align with to kick
off the “request to build” process for a 4. Trusted advisor
new product or feature. They first talk
As companies scale, there’s a need for leadership to have enough information
through what they’re looking to build,
to make decisions, especially when it comes to decisions about the product.
and then product ops collects a more
The product ops team (or person) is a key advisor for CPOs, VPs of product,
robust report of customer pain points
and other R&D leadership of the like — for example, by using data to advise on
by engaging their counterparts around
the roadmap or supplying product health data to the executive team.
the world. Since Uber is such a large,
global company, their product ops
team is dispersed in different markets, Product ops needs to be able to get leadership
and often rely on each other to share
the data that they need to make product
insights to inform product decisions.
decisions, not just the data they ask for.

Melissa Perri /// Founder

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04
Section
How does product ops impact the
rest of the company?
One of the biggest impacts product ops can make is taking administrative and
organizational tasks off product managers, so they can focus on improving the product.
With this comes some more specific effects, which we’ve outlined below.

Shifts in ownership
When a product ops function is introduced, expect a natural shift in responsibilities
since the diffuse, ops-y projects product managers took on in the past will now be
consolidated into one person or group.

Here are a few examples of what might shift to product ops:

Traditionally, product
managers were responsible
• Gathering and organizing data: product ops becomes the keeper of all product data,
including collecting it from multiple sources and sharing it with the right people for finding data from each
part of the organization on
• Running experimentation processes: this takes the burden (and intricacies) of things their own. I see product
like managing experiment schedules and segmenting users off of product managers ops taking over that entire
process.
• Collecting customer feedback: by delegating this to a single person or team, it helps
keep the feedback collection process consistent and scalable Melissa Perri /// Founder

• Training and enablement: product ops can use their product expertise to train sales
and CS teams on any new products or updates
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Traditionally the ops function has lived

Cross-team communication outside of the product team. Having a
dedicated focus embedded within the Digital
Since product ops serves as the product expert
for other teams across the company, those Home product organization has allowed
communication channels are clearly defined closer partnerships to be built to help ensure
and in an ideal world, everyone knows how and critical elements of go-to-market success (i.e.
where to get the information they need. support tools, communications, and training)
are complementary and reflective of the full
In addition to better-defined communication
channels, product ops also serves as a single product experience.
source of product expertise, which improves
communication around the product itself.
Theresa Baker ///
Senior Director, Product Management

Increased efficiency

A natural result of better communication is greater

efficiency: when people know where to go for The way I like to describe it is that we kind of
information and can find what they need more ran interference for the product owners. We
quickly, they become more efficient. And when allowed them to focus on what they truly were
product managers and product owners aren’t
responsible for, which was defining the product
tasked with things like creating sales materials
for new features or reporting on product metrics, and advancing the roadmap, rather than getting
they can build and release more, and do so at pulled into operational tasks and projects
a faster pace. related to bringing the product to market.
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Connecting product to the bottom line

With product ops in place, organizations are better able to

connect product decisions with their overall business strategy.

Within the Digital Home product team at Comcast, the ops

team helps identify ways to drive key business objectives
which positively impact the bottom line. For example, they
help define product enhancements to address customer
issues that may be driving support calls or technician visits,
as well as identify enhancements to frontline tools for more
efficient troubleshooting, resulting in operational savings for
the business.
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05
Section
What does the future look like
for product ops?
Product ops is simultaneously an emerging role, and one that has been around for decades
in one form or another. So, what’s on the horizon for product ops?

It was clear that product ops is on the rise:

As more organizations turn I think we’ll start to see more Just like the market for sales
to a data-driven approach and more people specializing ops tools is a lot more mature
— which every company in product ops, even at the than it was ten years ago, I think
should be doing— I think college level. There’s so much the number of tools available
we’re going to see this role opportunity there, since product for product ops people will
become an absolute critical is becoming increasingly grow. Every layer of the sales
component of any company important for topline business funnel has a best-in-class tool,
that has a technology team. metrics, and is now viewed as a and I can see that start to
revenue-producing function. develop within product as well.
Melissa Perri /// Founder
Shelly Perry /// Operating Partner Robert Hatta /// Talent Partner
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I think the full end-to-end product ops function will come

about by the merging of two teams: the team that focuses on
product analytics and user analytics — which I’ve seen more
and more through roles like “product analyst” — and the more
traditional product ops team that does things like insights
gathering, requirements process, and execution of the go-to-
market strategy. And my expectation is a lot more of these
types of teams will merge in the future.

Matt Shroder /// Head of Product Operations

But also that the role is

in for some changes:

I see product ops becoming more of a strategic role within

product teams. A lot of companies try to set up their tech
organization in a way that almost feels like a bunch of
different startups. These teams typically have a product
leader, an engineering leader, and I see the product
operations manager role becoming the ops leader, almost
like a mini COO.

Blake Samic /// Head of Product Operations

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I wouldn’t say tech companies have fully embraced product ops,

but I think they’re starting to embrace certain facets of the role.
The word ‘ops’ also has a little bit of a dull connotation to it, so
I don’t know if it’s going to be called product ops or something
fancier, but I think we’re going to see the role in different forms
and names — whatever makes it look and feel like this is a really
important function that’s moving the business forward.

Varun Ramamurthy Dinakur /// Founder & CEO

And there was also a

notion that product ops
still has a ways to go:

I think the definition of product ops can be evolved to

encompass a broader focus on the customer experience.
At the end of the day, we’re doing everything in service of
the customer, so there has to be that end-to-end customer
experience lens to approach all of the elements of the role.

Theresa Baker /// Senior Director, Product Management

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06
Section

Advice for getting started with product ops

It wouldn’t be right to collect all of this information about product
ops without sharing these experts’ firsthand advice for launching
(or improving) a product ops function.

What makes for a successful product ops person?

If you’re thinking about hiring a product ops person (or team), think of these as the characteristics to look for. And if you’re wondering
if you may be a product ops practitioner in hiding, use this list to self assess to see if you’re a good fit for the role.

1. Analytical/data-oriented 2. Comfortable with systems

Product ops people need to be pros at taking data and

Product ops people should be good at understanding
turning it into insights, as well as analyzing information
and using (which often includes learning) a variety of
from multiple data sources and being able to identify
tools in their day-to-day.
what is the most impactful.
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3. Collaborative 6. Business acumen

Collaboration was another top skill mentioned across

many of our interviews. Or as Blake Samic puts it, Since product ops aims to connect the product with
the ability to be a “collaboration catalyst”: someone a company’s business priorities, sound business
who can be put into a group of people and make the judgement is an important foundational skill to look for.
whole group more collaborative.

4. Great communicators 7. Product-oriented

This includes written, verbal, and in-person presentations. Product ops people don’t necessarily have to have a
The product ops role is going to be relaying information product management background, but they should
to many different teams, all the time. Melissa Perri have a general understanding of what a product
said product ops also needs to be especially good at team does (and able to learn the ins and outs of your
collecting information and presenting it in new ways. product quickly).

5. Entrepreneurial 8. Leadership

We also heard things like action-oriented and able to Not every product ops role will have direct reports,
structure something that’s ambiguous. Matt Shroder but they need to have a scaled impact across different
noted that product ops people need to be comfortable functions of the business, which requires them to be
with ambiguity in general. leaders in their own right.
 26

How to get started

Wondering where to start? Here’s what some of our interviewees suggested:

Like with all things, if you I think you should start I think you could have a scaled
make it too big at the very thinking about product ops down version of product ops
beginning and set up too when you’re still small, so even at a very small company.
many expectations, you that you can orient yourself In that case, you might
run the risk of failing in an towards scaling well. You have more of a centralized
equally big way. My advice don’t want to be a company group that’s thinking about
would be to start small, of 500 people and not have these things rather than the
show some results, and it the right processes in place. embedded role within the
will catch on. product organization.
Melissa Perri /// Founder
Shelly Perry /// Operating Partner Blake Samic ///
Head of Product Operations