What is Product Operations?

But what does that mean in practice, and how can we ensure Product Operations reaches its full potential at the organizations in which it operates? 

While the manifesto presented here aims to address the discipline’s core elements, you may have come across this website without knowing much about Product Operations. Maybe it’s your first time hearing the term, or maybe you were just never really sure what it all entailed - compounded by the fact that no matter how many people you ask, everyone seems to have a different definition of what is and isn’t Product Ops. 

In plain English, Product Operations practitioners aim to provide the people they support with the tools, methodologies, frameworks, and knowledge they need to effectively provide value to the end user. However, even this sentence is full of vague statements. Who exactly are these people we claim to support, and what do we mean by ‘support’ anyway? 

Product Operations can seem impenetrable at first, because its implementation is heavily impacted by the environment in which it operates. In some companies, Product Ops managers exclusively concern themselves with the ways of working of their PMs, while other organizations widen the scope to include everyone in the product team - from designers, QA, engineers, to data professionals, UX writers, and researchers. 

Similarly, the support given heavily depends on which challenges the organization is trying to overcome. From harmonizing operating cadences after mergers & acquisitions, managing the department’s tool stack, increasing data accessibility, breaking down silos between commercial and product teams, leading product trainings, devising a department-wide communication strategy to co-creating learning paths for PMs, there are many things that can fall under a Product Operations manager’s jurisdiction - part of the reason this discipline is so hard to define. 

But while the term ‘Product Operations’ has received a lot of attention in recent years, it’s important to remember that these types of tasks have always existed in our companies - whether we had a dedicated Product Ops function or not. And regardless of whether you’re a product leader looking to upgrade your product organization’s operating system, or whether you're an individual PM who’s just looking to make their team run a little smoother, we’re all contending with topics that can have far-reaching implications for how we collectively get our work done.

But regardless of what your job title is, Product Operations work faces a unique challenge: If technically anything can fall under our set of responsibilities, at what point do we politely decline? How do we ensure we don’t drown in the day-to-day? How do we maintain our focus on the overall mission (to empower the product team to effectively deliver value to our users) without losing out on opportunities for improvement across the organization?

Don’t let the name fool you - Product Operations is a strategic discipline as much as an operational one, and one that will only truly live up to its potential when allowed to act as such. Because just as we understand that a product vision and strategy is needed for us to know where our product teams need to go, Product Operations requires a vision for the future of said team, and a strategy to make that happen. 

And while Product Operations will always look a little differently wherever you go, the Product Operations Manifesto has shown one thing very clearly: When it comes to our principles, commitments, and prerequisites, we are in alignment. 

The mystery of Product Operations won’t be solved anytime soon, and maybe that’s besides the point. What is important is that we act under a shared set of principles - a north star, perhaps - so that no matter how much our day-to-day differs from one another, we can come together under one mission: To empower product organizations to collectively, effectively and efficiently drive the most meaningful outcomes for customers’.

We sincerely hope we’ve managed to make the fuzziness of Product Ops a little clearer to you, and look forward to continuing to explore this new and exciting discipline together - no matter your job title.