Product Operations

Data teams are critical partners to product ops. I've tended to structure product operations as the owners of the plan, strategies, operations, outcomes. We partner with data teams to inform strategies, measure ops effectiveness and report on growth / trends. As part of a product resourcing plan, having data team alignment / designation is critical. 

It all depends on the size of the product and requirements scope. I tend to see this role as a right-hand to product VPs / GMs, so oversight of the product portfolio within that construct often determines the scope for the prod ops person. 

Alternativley, I've also seen the role built out in a way that's similar to product marketing. 

In taking an end-to-end business leadership approach to this role, it opens up multiple career paths. For example- if your goal is to become a product GM, this is well aligned. If your ambition is to be a future COO, I think this is a great role to dig into. I think it's also a great extension to leadership roles in customer success and GTM as well. I definitely see it as a choose your own adventure skillset.

Ideally, I would like to hire a Senior Product Manager/Designer/Marketer etc. who is looking to take their skills and do something new/different with their career.

I say this because these roles nurture things like:

• Design Thinking
• Using data to build and test hypotheses 
• Ability to break big things into simple, lovable, complete solutions where we can ship small and learn along the way
• Desire and track record to deliver outcomes 
• Appreciates process, but understands that not every problem needs a new process 

Great communication and intellectual honestly are of the main traits I look for. 

It's pretty important to be extremely resourceful and confident in one's ability to make a lot with a little and to influence teams to buy into your mission enough that they want to contribute / jump in. 

I also get really excited when I meet people who have had experience in both product and GTM organizations and have a competence in translating across teams / tying both worlds together. It's pretty rare, but I see it being more and more critical.

Ultimately I define success as new customer acquisition, ARR, and realized revenue. 

However, I also think it's critical to establish strong feedback loops across departments & customers to understand how successfully you're building a connected culture that your customers & internal stakeholder teams feel good about engaging with. I say this because I've noticed that product teams can often operate in a fairly isolated way- remaining in a world of engineer-to-engineer and this can sometimes inhibit growth, learning and success. 

I've noticed it's pretty common that this role can be overlooked / under resourced. Instead, companies will rely on product ops being addressed via a team effort between Product Market & Product Management. I tend to think every meaningful product within a company should be set up as a 'mini company' within the parent company. In this way, I'd see prod ops more widely understood as a COO of a specific product / set of products.

30: listen, learn, pull data, conduct cross-dept & key stakeholder interviews. Immediately get with finance to understand the product business model & resourcing. 

60: Propose high / medium / low plans in alignment with revenue / customer acquisition targets. Get approvals across key stakeholders. 

90: Start phased build against proposed plans. Run internal campaign across key leaders / stakeholders to socialize plan, timelines, feedback loops.