Starting in October, 2021, Marty Cagan at the Silicon Valley Product Group began writing about Product Operations and how he sees it relative to product development. He must have received a lot of (perhaps) negative feedback on the article, and he wrote a second blog post in November. That too seemed to land with a bit of a thud, and thankfully so. Because in December Cagan, along with SVPG partner Chris Jones, took a third run at Product Ops, and I think did a great job articulating this relatively nascent (if in name only) competency.
Cagan is adamant there’s nothing new being done under the moniker of Product Operations, but for most people that’s either fine or a moot point: plumbing’s existed since the Roman age, but who cares until you need one? That said, I think Cagan and Jones have done a great job synthesizing the roles and responsibilities of Product Operations in different organizations, and I’d like to summarize them here. As always, your mileage may vary, but ideally, you’ll see your current Product Operations set-up as well as aspirational model within the below.
The Reincarnated PMO Model
Cagan describes this as the claw back of the Program Management Office with its command-and-control mindset. He’s most wary of this model as a Trojan horse, even if some of the planning activities, coordinating and tracking, and standard operating procedures and governance are important and necessary.
The Two-in-a-Box PM Model
Cagan feels he’s seen this model for decades where companies struggling with too much work to do split the role into two—a Product Manager who owns the development of the product and a Product Operations Manager who handles the day-to-day tasks involved with development. Oddly, he recognizes that some medium- to large-sized companies have enough staff to break the work of the product manager into more manageable (and I’d offer, specialized, roles) though I understand his point that these should be subordinate to and offering advise and assistance to the Product Manager.
The Delegated Product Leader Model
Cagan believes it’s the role of Managers of product managers to enable their product managers to do good work through coaching and developing product strategy, and that product ops should not. I agree. But if you’re asking Product Operations to support Product Managers it’s a gray line as to what conversation or tool does or doesn’t coach a PM or assist in developing, designing, or communicating strategy. We can all be leaders to some degree, but I agree that a Product Operator is not at their core the manager of the product managers.
Production Operations Rebranding Model
I’m glad Cagan hit on this one, and I appreciate his clarification of “product operations” and “production operations”. In my review, this model—”ensuring the product is running properly in production”—is one of the two most common. The role is important, but in my view it aligns with Operations and not Product.
The Product Marketing Manager Rebranding Model
A model I’ve only just seen start to appear in job descriptions and postings is rebranding the Product Marketing Manager. Cagan notes this role covers “launch activities, customer discovery programs, beta programs, sales, services and marketing training; continuous product go-to-market testing; and then the customer feedback needs to be aggregated and analyzed by the various sales channels.” And we think Product Managers have a lot do, and then question why some might delegate work to product operations!
That said, I think this model is the most worrisome. Marketing and Product Marketing have existed for quite a long time, and need to exist, be well-fed and cared for. Simply giving up on “marketing” and calling it operations does a disservice to this competency.
The Force Multiplier Model
Finally, here we see Cagan imagine his ideal state for Prod Ops, through his reading of Melissa Perri’s great book—Escaping the Build Trap. Her three pillars are:
- Quantitative Insights – help product teams make data-informed decisions
- Qualitative Insights – coaching and enabling the product teams to do good research and learn first-hand
- Tools and Best Practices Evangelism – constantly working to raise the bar on the skill level of the organization
This last pillar seems to cause Cagan the most consternation, because in his experience he’s seen good companies take principal product managers and ask them to raise the skills of the company’s product managers. That’s all good and well if the principal is given space, time, and the tools to do this. But in my experience many CPOs and VPs of Product feel like this takes a star player off the field in the hope that yelling from the sidelines achieves the same goal.
However if the principal is given the space, why not call them Product Operators and make this explicit? Cagan does suggest this, as well as a few other specialized planners well-suited for this role and moniker. Among the latter I’ve seen in many organizations where ProdOps is home for exceptionally strong people who track and coordinate the quarterly planning process as well as help organize cross-team planning, particularly with those not familiar with Agile development or Product processes.
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At the end of his article, Cagan again warns of letting the process become the thing, and I can’t agree more. Very few like process for process-sake, and the goal of any process is not simply to exist but to solve a problem some human being is having.
Overall, I’m heartened that Cagan and Jones (and Perri as Cagan acknowledges) are spending time talking about Product Operations and helping to define a more standard model for companies and potential product operators to rally around.