How does the product team define successful product operations?
When I started Product Ops here at realtor.com I started with mission, principles, and northstar metric:
Mission:
Help level and clear the field on which our people and teams play, so you can do the best work of your career, in a community you love, and positively impact the lives of our users
Principles
People are our foundation
Create the conditions for you to do your best work, grow and find success in your role, and build an enduringly great community of Products People
Raise as many boats as possible
Drive continuous improvement in those areas where we need to scale as an organization; communications, planning, hiring, onboarding, tools, etc.
Amplify best practices
Look horizontally across communities, squads, individuals to identify and standardize on the right things (not standardize everything)
Northstar Metric
Employee engagement
(NOTE: our CPO and I landed on this as the northstar metric because we saw Product Ops as there not to do the work of a Product Manager, Product Designer, Product Marteter, but rather make the system in which we work in easier to get sh!t done and more rewardingfor our teams)
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.