Christopher Global

The next step in becoming a product-centric organization is to develop product operations. What does it mean exactly? Product Ops refers to the process of establishing a discipline that emphasizes collaboration, cross-functional processes, and the use of data to guide decision-making. Essentially, it is taking over some of the more traditional aspects of a PMO, but with a product-driven approach.

This methodology can be used to drive alignment, efficiency, and communication with an emphasis on delivery. Its purpose is to align resources to drive product outcomes and objectives. Strategic and product roadmaps are driven by these product outcomes.

Product Ops also suffer from competing priorities. In any organization with a strategic focus, there must be a process by which stakeholders come together to make the difficult decisions.  

Roadmaps are constructed based upon feature prioritization. Business value is built on them. Therefore, when you structure product operations, the data must follow an in-out information flow like a PMO.

Product Operations must track data, status, and reporting as inputs and make decisions and strategies as outputs. It does not matter whether it is Production Ops or PMO Operations, these fundamentals remain the same.