A Product Operations Framework

Product Operations covers many areas, making it sometimes difficult to grasp its scope and often confusing it with the role of product management. In a nutshell, product management should be focused on creating value for the customers, while product ops is focused on orchestrating, facilitating, and enabling the work of product teams.

Think of it as the relationship between software engineers and scrum masters. The role of scrum masters is to help software engineers focus on their key skills and take away the organizational and facilitation aspects of software engineering. 

And the reality of product operations is that it affects not only PM, but also design, software engineering, and in some cases even GTM teams.

A two-tiered Product Operations framework

When planning how to visualize this framework, I came up with a two-tier solution.

The first tier contains the principles. These are the main goals of product operations that are pretty much always true.

The second tier focuses on the responsibilities of product operations teams, which can more easily vary, either between organizations, and maybe even over time, as product operations matures.

There is room for even a third tier, which would focus on even more tactical aspects, like processes or frameworks. For now, let's concentrate on a simpler version that is easier to digest.

The principles of Product Operations

Principles are the fundamental truths of Product Operations that are always valid:

• Product at scale: drive faster, smoother, and more predictable product development and delivery process. Ensure that all the steps of the process are clear and consistently followed.
• Alignment: make sure everyone understands the connection between strategy, roadmaps, KPIs, and processes. In many product teams, this might be restricted to a product trio, but in others it expands to go-to-market teams.
• Facilitation: provide the tools, frameworks, training, and visibility for all the teams involved.
• Feedback Loop: Systematically gather, analyze, and provide any insights on the operations that will facilitate process improvements.

The responsibilities of Product Operations

The areas of responsibility are going to be the tasks and obligations that Product Operations needs to fulfill:

• Product Lifecycle Governance: define all the processes that product development needs to go through, from product strategy, gathering insights, prioritization, planning, execution, and launching.
• Tooling  & Tech Stack Management: own and maintain the product tech stack, how they integrate in processes, and customize them to the company's needs. Train teams to use the tools.
• Data & Insights Enablement: Define, track, and make available all important metrics that will help teams with their work, or track goal achievement.
• Voice of the Customer Integration: Establish reliable channels for feedback to reach product teams, so it can be processed and evaluated against current goals.
• GTM & Internal Enablement: coordinate and streamline Go-to-Market (GTM) readiness across teams, creating alignment between different functions (Sales, Marketing, Support) to maximize the impact of product launches.
• Continuous Learning: training product teams, making room for the development of skills and knowledge.

Is this framework killing individual thinking?

No, that is not the goal of this framework, but of course, as with any framework, if applied very rigidly, it will prevent innovation. The goal is to provide the maturity that helps teams reach a level where they can innovate on top of what the framework provides and help them customize it to their own needs.

This is why frameworks try to stay high-level; this is the reason why my Product Operations Playbook program offers several hours of consultation to help you tailor this framework to your own needs. This program teaches the product operations that I've successfully implemented in different companies (both tech and traditional ones).