Product Ops: Necessary or Not?

Not in my opinion, let me tell you why.

Product Ops is becoming increasingly popular, but do we really need that? I don’t think so, and many people disagree with me. Now let me tell you why.

I see more than enough confusion with current roles. What makes it necessary to add another?

It’s already common to see a multitude of roles in the same company like:

• Project Manager: Taking care of timelines and dependencies

• Product Manager: Choosing what to focus on and what not to

• Product Owner (It should be the PM, but not often the case): In wrong cases, taking care of execution

• Business Analyst: Defining requirements and understanding what the business needs

• Tech Lead: Taking the lead on how to create maintainable applications

• Engineering Manager: Enabling engineering members to grow

• Agile Coach: Helping organizations become agile

• Scrum Master: Enabling organizations to adopt Scrum successfully

Look at the above. Wouldn’t it be better to simplify it instead of adding roles?

Adding by subtracting is our best shot to simplify this game.

Before we jump into Product Ops and why I don’t see value in it, let me give you a limited offer :)

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Product Ops: Necessary or Not? By David Pereira

What’s Product Ops?

Pendo’s definition is:

Product ops (short for product operations) is an operational function that optimizes the intersection of product, engineering, and customer success. It supports the R&D team and their go-to-market counterparts to improve alignment, communications, and processes around the product.

The intention of Product Ops is for sure good and can indeed help organizations improve their work. But now let me ask a polemic question. Is Product Ops addressing the real problem or adding a band-aid to it?

Instead of adding a new role to optimize the intersection between product, engineering, and business. What about leaders doing what has to be done?

I fear that Product Ops doesn’t address the root cause of the problem. It may bring value, but it won’t change the following:

❌ Unempowered teams
❌ Lack of accountability
❌ Poor product management skills
❌ Confusion between roles

In my experience, I’ve seen great results by simplifying. Give you a few examples:

✅ Merge PO and PM roles. Ensure one person drives the bus. This creates end-to-end responsibilities
✅ Limit team size to 7 people. Small teams will collaborate better than bigger teams
✅ Reduce team scope. Give a bite-size responsibility to each team
✅ Empower decision-making. Trust teams to make decisions within their product scope
✅ Set goals. Define the direction and empower teams to reach it
✅ Reduce dependencies. Tech strategy to reduce dependencies across teams as much as possible

The Dangers of Product Ops

I fear that Product Ops will create a kind of “Center of Excellence,” meaning that an external team defines best practices for those getting the work done. This can disempower teams and lead to more process orientation than remaining flexible.

Being in Germany for six years, I’m confident that companies will love adding processes. Yet, I’m highly concerned about how that’ll help teams drive value faster.

Melissa Perri, whom I greatly respect, wrote an entire book about Product Operations. Although the content makes sense, I remain skeptical about the necessity of it. Taking one part of the book, look at the following image:

Product Ops Hypothetical Evolution by Melissa Perri

When you look at the above image, what do you see?

I’m particularly scared by what I imagine:

• Coordination over collaboration

• Process over flexibility

• Following over leading

• Questionable roles. e.g., Template Manager

I feel like Product Ops prioritizes establishing efficiency over accelerating learning. That’s against one critical statement from Ash Maurya, author of Lean Canvas:

“Your learning speed is your unfair advantage”

Stability won’t ensure you learn faster.

More processes won’t contribute to the required flexibility.

Now, let’s look at the other side of the coin.

The Benefits of Product Ops

On the other hand, Product Ops can help teams become better at creating digital products. Many companies and organizations haven’t seen sound product management practices; when someone comes in and shows how that could be, they can grow. That’s something Product Ops can enable.

Product Ops doesn’t need to be out of the product team, but it’s what happens in most cases. I’d see Product Ops as something to level teams up and then step back and let teams go on their journey. In short, it is becoming obsolete.

When I compare Product Ops to Shuhari (first learn, then detach, and finally transcend), I’d say it should be the first part. Then, teams should evolve instead of someone outside the team doing it.

Wrap Up

I cannot deny that some companies claim to use Product Ops for their benefit, and apparently, it does work well. Yet, I’ve seen many other companies succeeding without product ops. Both can work.

What cannot work is a company with poor leadership.

At this moment, I don’t see a need for Product Ops. I do see a need for leaders with the guts to do what needs to be done.

What are your thoughts?

Let’s learn from each other.

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Have a lovely day,

David