Scaling Your Product Org w/ Product Operations

Something clicked for me as I was sharing what I see in the trenches with product organizations and product operating models. The vision of a product-oriented organization is to have product teams that are aligned around outcomes, focused on what matters, collaborating cross-functionally, and equipped with data and insights to make better decisions.

That is a good north star, but it is a challenging change, especially in organizations new to the product world: classic IT, internal software, and beyond-software environments. They are moving from managing tasks and backlogs to managing outcomes, from owning projects or technologies to owning products, and from opinion-driven steering to learning from data and evidence.

What I have seen help is having people who enable, steward, and promote product-oriented thinking and ways of working. They also provide the platforms and tools that make it easier for product professionals to work this way.

In established product organizations, especially in tech, this is known as Product Operations: improving structure, process, tooling, and the product management experience so product teams can create value with fewer distractions.

If you are leading a shift from project to product, Product Operations is one capability worth learning about and thinking through as part of your product organization design.

I think the future of Product Operations is even more interesting. As companies start to use product thinking to develop the company, there will be even more demand for people who help the organization think and work in product ways.