TODAY’S POD SHOT
Thought we'd go back a couple of years on this one to cover Product operations. Product Ops exploded from almost non-existent to deployed in half of all scaling tech companies in about five years - and fundamentally changed what product managers actually do all day. Melissa Perri and Denise Tillis, reveal the three pillars of product ops, why PMs shouldn't fear this role taking their job, how to hire your first product ops person, and how to roll it out successfully.
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📆 Published: November 16th 2023
🕒 Estimated Reading Time: 9 mins. Time saved: 55+ mins! 🔥
Key insights from the full article:
📈 Explosive growth — Product ops went from almost non-existent to deployed in ~50% of scaling tech companies in about 5 years (Uber, Stripe, OpenAI, Ramp, Deal all have it)
⚡ The 70/30 problem — Most PMs spend only 30% of time on strategic work; product ops flips this to 70%+ strategy by offloading operational busywork
🏗️ Three pillars — Business & Data Insights (quantitative), Customer & Market Insights (qualitative), Process & Practices (how you build)
🎯 PMs keep the important stuff — Decision-making, strategy, vision, prioritisation, tradeoff conversations, go-to-market—none of this gets outsourced
👥 Start with one person — Don't build a massive team; hire one skilled person focused on your biggest pain point and demonstrate quick wins
🚫 Not project management — Product ops increases speed and quality of decision-making; project managers deliver specific timeboxed projects
💼 Reports to CPO — Product ops should be the right-hand person to the head of product, not scattered across other functions
🎯 Product Operations: The Role Transforming How 50% of Companies Build Products
⚡ The Rise of Product Ops: From Zero to Standard Practice
Back in 2018, when Melissa mentioned product ops in "Escaping the Build Trap", readers asked: "What is this thing?" By the time of this 2023 conversation, ~50% of scaling companies had already adopted it. Now, heading into 2026, it's become as essential as having a design system or engineering standards.
Blake Bartlett created the role at Uber, replicated it at Stripe, and was running it at OpenAI when this episode aired. Companies like Ramp, Deal, and Amplitude had already followed. The adoption curve Melissa described was striking: In 2020, 60% of Denise's masterclass attendees were "product-ops curious" with no implementation. By 2023, those same companies were already optimising existing functions. Today, the question isn't whether to have product ops, but how to optimise it.
Why the rapid adoption? The maths Melissa laid out remains undeniable: "Do you want to hire 10,000 product managers who concentrate on strategic work 30% of the time? Or do you want them concentrating on strategic work 70% of the time with a product operations team supporting them?"
The cultural shift Melissa identified has only accelerated. Her observation about Harvard MBA students reconsidering PM careers after simulations - "I did not realise I had to do so many things". Product ops emerged as the antidote.
What started as a Silicon Valley experiment is now global standard. European scale-ups, Asian tech giants, even traditional enterprises—wherever product teams scale past 20-30 PMs, product ops is now the default solution to operational chaos.
🏗️ The Three Pillars: What Product Ops Actually Does
Product operations isn't a single job - it's a function built around three distinct pillars. Your biggest pain point determines where to start.
Pillar 1: Business & Data Insights
This pillar ensures PMs have engagement, revenue, and behavioural data without spending 20-30% of their time wrangling SQL queries.
What this looks like:
Building repeatable dashboards for key metrics (acquisition, activation, retention, revenue)
Running ad-hoc data queries when PMs need specific cuts
Creating views by customer segment, product line, feature adoption
Surfacing unexpected trends and anomalies
Automating weekly/monthly reporting that used to take hours
Melissa's example: "As a CPO, ARR is interesting, but ARR by customer segment, by product line, by feature set adoption is what I need." Product ops provides data with a product lens - not just company metrics, but product-specific insights that drive decisions.
Critical distinction: PMs still interpret trends and understand causation vs correlation. They still need to know what questions to ask. They just don't craft SQL queries or learn MongoDB (as Melissa did early in her career - "never used it again"). The product ops person becomes their data partner, not their data replacement.
Pillar 2: Customer & Market Insights
The "squishy middle" that's hugely impactful for decision speed.
What this looks like:
Building participant databases for research
Creating findings repositories (Dovetail) for querying past research
Aggregating sales/support feedback into insights
Coordinating (not conducting) user research
Jen Cardello at Fidelity runs research ops that certifies employees for compliant customer research and democratises insights access. This enables researchers, doesn't replace them.
Pillar 3: Process & Practices
Where governance, templates, and coordination live. Often the starting point for enterprise transformations.
What this looks like:
Standardised roadmap templates (no more CEOs digging through JIRA)
OKR tracking dashboards
Go-to-market process templates
Training PMs to write epic-level stories execs can read
Denise's insight: This person needs "super high EQ" to sense how much process to introduce. "It's not about mandates - it's suggestions that make PMs' lives easier."
Which pillar first?
High-growth companies: Start with Data Insights to monitor what's working
Enterprise transformations: Start with Process because they lack operating models
Don't overlook: Customer Insights breaks down silos effectively
Key insight: Don't hire one person expecting expertise in all three pillars. Start with your biggest pain point, add specialists as you grow. The goal is shared services (automated systems), not large teams.
🎯 What PMs Keep: The Core That Never Gets Outsourced
The fear is real: if product ops takes over data, research coordination, and process, what's left for PMs? Answer: everything that actually matters.
Product managers retain 100% ownership of:
Decision-Making: Product ops informs; PMs decide. "You should never outsource decision-making to product ops," Melissa emphasises.
Strategy & Vision: Product ops gathers inputs, but PMs set direction. They're "the product manager for the product managers," not feature decision-makers.
Prioritisation: Which bets to make, features to build, work to sequence - all PM calls.
Stakeholder Management: Tradeoff discussions, saying no to sales requests, managing competing priorities - PMs own these conversations.
Go-to-Market: Product ops provides templates and coordination, but PMs own content, positioning, and working with sales/marketing.
Team Collaboration: PMs continue working directly with designers and engineers, making daily tradeoffs, ensuring outcomes.
Customer Research: Product ops coordinates participants; PMs conduct interviews, interpret findings, decide what to build.
The pattern is clear: Product ops handles infrastructure and systems. PMs handle outcomes, decisions, and human interactions.
Melissa's pitch to anxious PMs: "I constantly hear 'I'm so busy lining up customer interviews or getting data out of systems.' That's what we're trying to help with. It's supposed to be liberating, not more overhead."
Critical point: If product ops is making product decisions, you're doing it wrong. The goal is flipping PM time from 30% strategy to 70%+ strategy by offloading operational tasks that don't require product judgment.
👥 Who to Hire: Skills and Red Flags for Each Pillar
Hiring your first product ops person is high-stakes. Get it wrong, and the whole function gets a bad reputation. Here's who to look for.
For Pillar 1: Business & Data Insights
Background: Data analyst, BI specialist, consultant (ex-McKinsey/Deloitte)
Key Skills: Data storytelling, BI tools (Looker, Tableau, Amplitude), stakeholder communication
Red Flags:
❌ Database engineer mindset (building SQL tables vs insights)
❌ Can't communicate to non-technical people
❌ No interest in product context
Critical insight: This person typically doesn't come from product. That's okay. "You ask them the questions, they get the answers," Melissa explains.
For Pillar 2: Customer & Market Insights
Background: User researcher, research ops, UX
Key Skills: Research methodology, building systems, findings repositories (Dovetail)
Red Flags:
❌ Wants to conduct all research themselves (should enable others)
❌ No interest in operationalising research
❌ Confuses research with research ops
Jen Cardello at Fidelity is the gold standard—research background plus desire to systematise.
For Pillar 3: Process & Practices
Background: Product manager with process orientation
Key Skills: Super high EQ, systems thinking, PM workflows, knowing when to add/remove process
Red Flags:
❌ Agile coach with no PM experience (will optimise Scrum, not outcomes)
❌ Mandate-driven vs enabling
❌ Doesn't understand PM daily reality
Melissa's warning: "Agile coaches who've never been a PM will revert to optimising Scrum. We don't need another person telling us how to run standups."
Experience vs Training
Hire WITH product ops experience if: You need fast results, no time to coach, want someone who's seen multiple models
Hire WITHOUT experience if: You can coach them, want context-specific training, have unique needs
Interview questions that matter:
"Tell me about a time you automated something repetitive" (shows systems thinking)
"How would you handle a PM asking for a dashboard that takes 40 hours to build?" (shows prioritisation)
"What's the difference between vanity metrics and actionable metrics?" (shows product understanding)
Critical: Product ops should always report to the CPO or head of product—no exceptions. Reporting to engineering, data, or operations creates misaligned incentives.
The bottom line: Different pillars need completely different backgrounds. Don't expect one person to master all three. Your first hire sets the tone—choose based on your biggest pain point, and be prepared to coach them on the product lens they'll need to succeed.
🚀 Rolling It Out: Start Small, Demonstrate Value, Then Scale
The mistake companies make: trying to build an entire product ops function from day one. The winning approach: one person, one pain point, quick wins.
Step 1: Identify Your Biggest Pain Point
Shintaro Matsui (Amplitude) advises: "Do your listening tour. Understand where you can make the most difference quickly."
High-growth companies: Start with Data Insights to monitor what's working
Enterprise transformations: Start with Process because they lack operating models
Step 2: Hire One Person (Not a Team)
"Get started with one person," Melissa advises. "Usually you can get so much leverage that it frees you up to do what you need to get done."
That person should focus obsessively on one pillar. Don't tackle all three at once.
Step 3: Celebrate Quick Wins
Build momentum and credibility by showcasing early wins:
Dashboard that gives CPO board-ready metrics
Participant database cutting research coordination by 80%
Standardised roadmap template ending format confusion
Step 4: Be Transparent About Scope
With one person:
Portfolio roadmap view for executives
Repeatable dashboards
One standardised process
Needs team growth:
Embedded analysts per product group
Full research ops program
Comprehensive go-to-market coordination
Step 5: Scale Through Systems, Not Headcount
Anti-patterns to avoid:
One-to-one ratio of product ops to PMs ("If you're at one-to-one, you're doing it wrong," Melissa warns)
Building a "shadow PM" team that makes decisions
Creating bottlenecks where PMs must go through product ops for everything
Focusing on perfection over progress
The right approach: Build leverage through systems, automation, and self-service tools. One product ops person should support 8-15 PMs through infrastructure, not manual work.
Denise's observation: "It might take more manpower at the beginning to get it going. But ideally, you streamline this team and it becomes pretty lean. They're overseeing multiple programs or software systems that run themselves."
Case Study: Athena Health
Melissa's rollout at Athena Health (365 PMs, 5,000 developers) remains a textbook example:
The Problem:
CEO digging through JIRA for roadmaps
No R&D visibility
Fragmented data
The Solution:
Built portfolio roadmap views
Trained PMs on epic-level stories
Created OKR dashboards
Hired VP of Product Ops (PM background)
Built data insights team (one analyst per 5-8 teams)
The Result:
Survived multiple restructurings through 2023 and beyond
CPO Tim Davenport (at time of recording): "Will never work anywhere without product ops"
Lessons Learned:
Instrument data better from start
Focus on automation early
Build shared services, not embedded teams
The bottom line: Start with one person attacking your biggest pain. Show quick wins. Scale through systems, not bodies. When your CPO says they'll never work without product ops again, you've built something essential.
🔄 Product Ops vs Project Management vs Program Management
Confusion is rampant. Here's the difference:
Product Operations
Increases speed/quality of PM decision-making
Ongoing function (no end date)
Builds infrastructure, systems, insights
Example: Dashboard showing feature adoption by segment
Program Management
Coordinates large initiatives across teams
Runs for program duration
Cross-functional alignment
Example: Rolling out new pricing across 50 teams
Project Management
Delivers specific timeboxed projects
Has clear start/end dates
Manages tasks, timelines, resources
Example: Launching feature by Q3
Critical distinction: Product ops is ongoing infrastructure for better decisions. If product ops is tracking feature delivery timelines, you're doing it wrong - that's PM or project management territory. These roles can coexist; they solve different problems.
🎓 The Future That's Now Reality
Blake Bartlett pioneered product ops at Uber, replicated it at Stripe, and by this episode's airing was running it at OpenAI. Athena Health's product ops function has survived every restructuring. CPOs who've experienced it say they'll "never work anywhere without product ops again."
Looking back at Melissa's predictions from late 2023, her trajectory was spot-on. The 50% adoption she cited has likely reached the 70-80% range she predicted for "the next 2-3 years." The maths remain undeniable: as product teams scale, operational overhead grows exponentially. Product ops is the only sustainable solution.
What Melissa predicted—and what's happening now:
AI-powered product ops tools (now reality with tools like Amplitude's AI features)
Standardised product ops career paths (true as of 2024)
Product ops as standard for Series B+ companies (increasingly true)
Specialised product ops platforms
Melissa's closing insight remains timeless: "This is not a replacement for product managers or product leaders not having product management skills. It's to help skilled product managers and product leaders do their job better."
Product ops has become the biggest structural change in product management—successfully flipping time allocation from 30% strategy to 70%+ strategy at companies that embrace it. It wasn't about lowering the bar for PMs; it raised the ceiling for what product organisations can achieve.
The question is no longer whether to adopt product ops. It's whether you're optimising what you have - or still trying to survive without it.
🔗 Links Referenced:
Product Operations book: https://productoperations.com
Dragon Boat (portfolio management tool mentioned by Melissa)
Dovetail (research repository tool)
Vistaly (visual product workspace mentioned by Denise)
Jira Product Discovery (sponsor): https://atlassian.com/lenny
Blake Bartlett (product ops pioneer): Uber → Stripe → OpenAI
Jen Cardello (research ops leader at Fidelity)
Shintaro Matsui (product ops at Amplitude)
Whilst not mentioned it would be remiss of me not to link Graham Reid's excellent Product Ops Confidential (newsletter, podcast, and resources). You can check it out here: https://www.productopsconfidential.com/
That’s a wrap.
As always, the journey doesn't end here!
Please share and let us know what you liked or want changing! 🚀👋
Alastair 🍽️.