Product Ops: The Evolution of Product Management

The concept of product management has gained popularity and is starting to take hold in major companies under the umbrella of DX. Some of these companies are beginning to have product manager organizations of dozens of people or more.

In any organization, when the number of employees in a department surpasses 20-30, the need for formal structure and processes becomes more pressing. Product manager organizations are no exception, and when they reach 20-30 people, they begin to consider forming Product Ops teams to improve the scalability of the organization.

In this article, we will focus on the Product Ops organization, which is gradually being considered in Japan, and confirm its role and things to keep in mind when actually operating it.

What is Product Ops?

Product Ops is a role that designs, builds, and operates product planning and development operations, aiming to optimize them. While focused on supporting the product management organization, they are often responsible for a variety of operations, including working with design and engineering, as well as with the business side.

In other words, Product Ops handles the design and operation of workflows, allowing product managers to focus on planning and development while optimizing the use of resources. You could say that Product Ops functions as a product manager for the workflows of product planning and development, treating internal product managers as their users.

In Japan, there are still few Product Ops professionals with diverse backgrounds, but abroad, many come from consulting, as the role often involves formalizing abstract tasks. Consulting tends to focus on strategy, which aligns well with the operational framework design that Product Ops requires.

Comparison with product managers

Product managers are responsible for the evolution of the product itself, from product vision to effectiveness measurement in their area of responsibility. Product Ops, on the other hand, is responsible for everything from workflow design to operations in product planning and development, and is in charge of planning the company as a whole and improving the efficiency of development resources.

In other words, the perspective and scope are very different. Product managers are responsible for creating user value through products within their own area of responsibility, while Product Ops is responsible for improving the efficiency of the entire product management organization. Therefore, Product Ops needs to approach challenges from the same strategic perspective as the CPO and VPoP.

Also, while the scope of a product manager is to create user value through the product, Product Ops is not directly responsible for creating user value, but is mainly responsible for the design and operation of the workflow that serves as the foundation for such value creation.

Specific roles of Product Ops

Product Ops is responsible for designing the workflow related to product planning and development. Here, we will discuss in detail the strategic and organizational aspects of Product Ops.

1. Strategic

Optimize communication with management.

• Work with management to develop a product vision and roadmap, and formulate and manage an execution plan.

Collaborate with the business side.

• Design and implement rules for communicating product information to the business side, such as release schedules and the start of releases to users.
• Design and optimize the process of communicating user feedback obtained by the business side to the product manager and utilizing it in product development

Formatting of day-to-day operations.

• Formatting of key documentation such as PRDs, formatting of key documentation such as PRDs, and possibly including consideration of SaaS implementation

Coordination between products and business units.

• Design and evaluation of user surveys, including NPS
• Selecting product bundling and charging models, and finalizing pricing.
• Management of cross-product themes such as patents

Budgeting and budget management

• Design of personnel plan to realize product strategy, budget for research and various tools, and training plan for hiring and transfers
• After the budget is determined, management and operation of various expenditure situations

2. organizational aspects

Coordinate and manage hiring and intra-team transfers.

• Support the development of workforce plan based on the product strategy
• Create JDs based on hiring quotas, manage hiring goals, and optimize the hiring process.
• Plan and manage recruiting branding, including speaking at various conferences and distributing blogs, etc. for external audiences.

Design and operate onboarding menu.

• Design and operate content for new hires and transferees to get them up and running quickly as a product manager, not company-wide

Design of communications

• Design and operation of All hands, Slack, meetings, etc.

As mentioned above, this position will require a fairly broad understanding of the product manager's work, identifying issues, designing work flow, creating frameworks, and in some cases, personally going in and coordinating the work.

Launch and operation of Product Ops

First of all, a major issue in setting up Product Ops is what kind of person to assign and hire. Since Product Ops is not a popular role in Japan, it is necessary to transfer and hire people from positions with high affinity to Product Ops. Therefore, management consultants and IT consultants are a good fit in terms of skills and knowledge. Experience with projects similar to startups and ventures is also a good fit. Operations is actually compatible with the strategic thinking that consultants have in their arsenal, since it involves clarifying objectives and goals, and designing and implemeting the critical path to get there. However, the term "operations" itself is somewhat weak in Japan, so I think it is important to put forth the CPO Office, Product Strategy Office, etc., and firmly promote the high perspective and broad scope required of Product Ops, as well as its role in terms of strategy.

Next, once Product Ops is established, the Product Manager will consult with the Product Manager on a variety of matters due to the broad scope of the business. Many product managers are highly conscious of product vision and strategy due to the nature of their work, and tend to put off the establishment of various systems for the entire product manager organization. Therefore, when Product Ops is established, they come to us to ask if they can take over things that are outside their area of responsibility. However, Product Ops is meaningless unless it can improve the workflow and operational efficiency of product planning and development by not just taking over the work. The goal is to improve the efficiency of product planning and development, not to be an assistant to the product manager.

Product Ops is not only responsible for taking work from the product managers, but also needs to design various workflows and have the product managers actually operate the workflows. Therefore, strong backing from leadership, such as the CPO or VPoP, is often crucial. We rely on them to communicate the value of the new workflow to the entire organization and encourage its adoption. Of course, it is not only a top-down process, but also a process of supporting individual product managers on a monitoring basis, and then deploying it to the entire product manager organization at a time when it has been formulated to a certain degree.

Within the product manager organization, Product Ops is not an outsourcing team that consolidates work, but a team that focuses on improving the efficiency of the product manager organization, and it is important to be a good partner with the CPO/VPoP and product managers.

Summary

If you follow domestic articles related to product management, you will see a lot of talk about strategy and decision making, and if what is described in the Product Ops role is not evolving with the size of the organization and the phase of the product, you will be devoting more resources than you can imagine. Despite this, the work of structuring and building processes tends to be put on the back burner by product managers, who have the innovation of product evolution as their main focus.

Therefore, by establishing Product Ops and optimizing the construction and operation of workflow in product planning and development as a partner of product managers, we can be a part of the next evolution of product management.