Something clicked for me over the last couple of weeks as I’ve been sharing my reflections on what I’m seeing in the trenches when it comes to the journey towards Product Organizations and Product Operating Models.
As a reminder, The vision of the Product-oriented organization is to have product teams:
- Fully aligned around outcomes
- Focused on what truly matters
- Collaborating cross-functionally
- Equipped with data-driven insights to make informed decisions
This is a great north star.
But a challenging transformation.
Especially in organizations new to the Product world (think classic IT/internal software/beyond software).
Moving from managing tasks and backlogs to managing outcomes.
Owning Products rather than Projects / Technologies.
Providing Product professionals with access to the data and insights they need to iterate towards valuable outcomes.
What I’ve seen help is when organizations have people who enable, steward and promote product-oriented thinking and ways of working, and provide the platforms/tools that make it easier for product professionals to work this way.
In established Product Organizations, especially in the Tech world, this is known as Product Operations — optimizing structure, processes, and tooling to enhance the Product Management experience and drive innovation with fewer distractions.
Here’s the thing:
If you’re leading your organization’s journey from Project to Product, Product Operations capabilities is one area you should be learning about and thinking through as part of the structure of your Product organization.
PS 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 enabling people to think and work in product ways of working.