The ultimate guide to product operations | Melissa Perri and Denise Tilles

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The ultimate guide to product operations | Melissa Perri and Denise Tilles

Рет қаралды 12,689

Күн бұрын

Melissa Perri is the CEO of Produx Labs, a product management training organization; author of the seminal PM book The Build Trap; and a former Harvard Business School professor of product management. Denise Tilles is the CPO at Grocket, Melissa’s colleague at Produx Labs, and a seasoned product leader with over a decade of experience. Together they authored the new book Product Operations: How successful companies build better products at scale. In today’s episode, they share insights, strategies, and real-world experiences to master all things product ops. We discuss:
• What exactly product operations is
• The three pillars of the product ops role
• The biggest benefits of adding product ops to your organization
• Which tasks product managers should offload to product ops and which they need to own
• How to help PMs embrace the value of product ops
• Examples of companies that have implemented product ops well
• Who and how to hire for this role
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This entire episode is brought to you by Jira Product Discovery-Atlassian’s new prioritization and roadmapping tool built for product teams: atlassian.com/lenny/?...
Find the full transcript at: www.lennyspodcast.com/the-ult...
Where to find Melissa Perri:
• X: / lissijean
• LinkedIn: / melissajeanperri
• Website: produxlabs.com/
Where to find Denise Tilles:
• X: / dtilles
• LinkedIn: / denisetilles
• Website: www.denisetilles.com
Where to find Lenny:
• Newsletter: www.lennysnewsletter.com
• X: / lennysan
• LinkedIn: / lennyrachitsky
In this episode, we cover:
(00:00) About our guests, Melissa Perri and Denise Tilles
(03:46) How common is the product operations role?
(07:41) The benefits of having a product ops person in your organization
(09:16) How to help PMs embrace the value of product ops
(11:44) The three pillars of the product ops role
(15:25) How user research fits in
(18:35) Why product ops will be an essential role for product managers to thrive
(24:24) Which tasks product managers should offload to product ops and which they need to own
(28:58) Project management vs. product ops
(29:44) The jobs of a product ops person
(37:38) Why the product ops role will never become obsolete
(39:31) How many product ops people you need
(45:13) First steps in building out a product ops team
(47:06) What to look for in your first hire
(51:11) Key skills needed for a product ops person
(57:29) Who product ops should report to
(59:50) An example of rolling out product ops at Athena Health
(1:09:35) Lightning round
Production and marketing by penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.
Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.

Пікірлер: 31

@ShahedKhalili 8 ай бұрын

This is why I love Lenny. Back-to-back episodes with one leader who says less product management, and ones who say more product management. There is no one size fit all approach. Love it. Keep the ideas flowing Lenny.

@LennysPodcast 8 ай бұрын

haha, indeed! And thank you! Though, if you think about it, the two messages aren't that different. Both are sharing approaches to finding more leverage in your PM team. Brian's approach is to offload work to program managers (plus have your product managers own marketing). This approach is to offload work to product ops. I suspect the two role are essentially the same, but with different names.

@hcubill 7 ай бұрын

What a product leader Melissa is. It’s breathtaking to see her express her opinions with such clarity.❤

@Al-wh1hw 6 ай бұрын

That's the exact question I also ask at interviews that Melissa asks.. Speaking about failures tells so much about a person's growth mindset, and being comfortable about the messy. Thanks very much Lenny ❤

@TheProductDevelopmentPodcast 8 ай бұрын

Great content as always, Lenny 🔥 Great to see contrasting views episode to episode.

@hasa08ab 8 ай бұрын

Great inspiration! Love to connect with Mellisa and Denise on this topic - super use full discussion

@swarupae2559 8 ай бұрын

Wow, very enlightening and engaging episode.

@eugenkolbey3450 8 ай бұрын

so sad to watch that company establish "product ops", so CFO and CPO can talk to each other, Chesky did a better job making huge company more aglie and aligned, that "product ops" motion. Thank you Lenny, it's always great and important to hear from the author.

@ramon-chanco 6 ай бұрын

"Product Ops are the Product Managers for the Product Managers" Just want to underline this. Super concise framework for thinking about product ops. Love it.

@kyrillzlobenko938 4 ай бұрын

Awesome episode 👍👍👍

@user-zd5uz2kl8v 5 ай бұрын

Thank you very much for this great video! :) I am looking for trainings and best practices on Portfolio Management. Any advice?

@jsj14 8 ай бұрын

when 2 of your biggeest role models in Product Manager come in 1 video - Lenny and Melissa !

@ramyaram 2 ай бұрын

This is great!!

@ramyaram 2 ай бұрын

Great job Lenny!!

@praveensg 3 ай бұрын

Works great for large corporations. Smaller companies cannot afford this level of staffing and you will need to roll up your sleeves to deal with all aspects of product. And that's the only way to learn than by just delegating.

@praveensg 3 ай бұрын

And how much strategizing do you need to do on a work day anyway 😅

@georgialin2446 8 ай бұрын

Product Ops sounds like an assistant with a fancier name. What is the career path of a Product Ops person, and what are the benefits and growth opportunities for someone who may not have decision-making power but needs to handle all the trivial tasks?

@vanaconsulting 8 ай бұрын

I'm thinking (out loud) this may transform into a central "Rev Ops" groups that owns revenue data, product usage, customer feedback, NPS, win/loss data, user research etc. - synthesizes and provides this data to Product/Marketing/Sales teams.

@product-thinking 8 ай бұрын

There are RevOps teams out there already, but they usually don't provide the level of detail needed to monitor Product strategy as they are focused on sales and sales enablement. They're looking at things from an overall perspective but not segmented in ways that help the product managers specifically. If there is a centralized data team that looks at this holistically AND helps product (Doodle does this as a company) I see no problem with the Data areas living together in one centralized team. There is more than just data in Product Ops though, and that's why I think it's important to consider it separate from RevOps. - Melissa

@vanaconsulting 8 ай бұрын

That makes sense. My key point is all the areas I listed above - e.g. product usage, customer feedback etc. should not be a departmental initiative. Product ops should not "own" customer feedback as much as CS teams should not own product usage, whether you call this Rev Ops or something else.@@product-thinking

@product-thinking 8 ай бұрын

Agree with that! I don't think it's about owning, it's more about surfacing it to the right people in a format they can digest.@@vanaconsulting

@hrahman3123 8 ай бұрын

I feel like this new vertical of product ops is open to be automated by AI. Essentially every PM has a Product Ops AI asistant that connects with all your internal & external data and have a coversation about it to help guide the PM. I'm sure its more complicated than that but I can't think of a reason why this wouldn't happen.

@LennysPodcast 8 ай бұрын

We actually talk about this, if you didn't see this yet. Will product ops people be automated. Their point is you don't need many. Even just one product ops person can make a big dent.

@bertilhatt 7 ай бұрын

I was very surprised by the content of this episode: - What you describe here is generally part of the *product analyst* role; there are variations, but for example, gathering data from production databases (what Melissa calls “MongoDB“) is even two other roles: Data engineering and Analytics Engineering. There are also overlaps with User eXperience Research, as pointed out, but those are also clearly distinct roles. - What I’ve heard described as Product Operation is a very different role, where people handle how the product is released and presented after release; in particular, if you have a B2B client, who gets access to which feature through a feature-flag-like system. They deal with who can see early Beta, what feature is illegal in which country, and coordinate with Product marketing on local releases-or one person deals with both. Data comes in when the role is of revenue manager. That presentation describes something close to it: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/gJNhhJeGmrmcops.htmlsi=392gbcxq4YoTIB0d The dichotomy is best explained in this presentation: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/rs-DpqSryLnHkqM.htmlsi=dP86lM_wMS6iFDCH

@denisetilles2269 7 ай бұрын

As we describe in the book, a product operations team can look different at every company, depending on the unique needs of your organization. The product operations manager or team supports the *enablement* of faster and better PM decision-making. The videos here mostly are in sync with the book's POV, except for Product QA and the go/no-go call. Product operations may help *inform* those decisions with data, but the final decision belongs to the PM. -Denise

@Techzi-co 8 ай бұрын

Isn't 'product ops' what a lot of companies call 'junior PM's?" sounds like the lead-in position to being a PM

@product-thinking 8 ай бұрын

Unfortunately a lot of people hire Junior PMs and do give them the operations work. But, the best way to go from a junior PM to a Senior PM is to give them meaningful product work, but just reduce the scope. I might have a junior PM assisting on a feature or taking a small enhancement on their own with mentorship. Product Ops work actually gets more leverage from people who are experienced than junior. - Melissa

@siddhantsingh3411 8 ай бұрын

I have a bad feeling about this growth wise for PMs. We are pushing them away from all the different areas they would communicate with and give that to Product Ops.

@product-thinking 8 ай бұрын

Product Ops shouldn't replace good communication between the areas, it should enhance it. I think of it more like making sure the data flows consistently between teams so you can go have meaningful conversations with the others. But Product Ops isn't typically just talking to sales *for* product managers. - Melissa

@user-kg1od9es5d 8 ай бұрын

product ops is as useful as product owners.