Where do you draw the lines between Product Ops and PMO?

Oscar Health is the first company I’ve worked in with both Product Ops and PMO (Program Management Office), so I can share how we think about the distinction in our context.

As I shared, the bulk of Product Ops is embedded within specific engineering pods – my team is expected to be subject matter experts of the domain areas they cover. So, if the work is domain specific and execution related, chances are high it will go to Product Operations.

In contrast, our Program Managers are aligned to wide-reaching company initiatives – our PMO teammates need to have the “big picture” in their head and can’t go particularly deep in any one domain. So, if the work is domain agnostic and ensuring others execute on their tasks, we expect it to live with PMO.

An example of this relates to Open Enrollment (OE), Oscar’s yearly “busy season” when individuals can select health insurance on the public exchanges. Open Enrollment touches more than half of Oscar’s 40 pods – there are a lot of discrete tasks that need to be executed on to ensure that we are ready for OE. Coming up with the plan for our Tech pods and tracking to validate that we will hit key milestones is the responsibility of PMO. Ensuring that a pod executes on their assigned work is the responsibility of Product Ops.