Understanding the role of product ops | Christine Itwaru (Pendo)
Christine Etwaru, a longtime Product Ops leader at Pendo, discusses the emerging role of Product Operations. She explains what Product Ops teams do, how they support Product Managers, and when companies should consider adopting this function, emphasizing its evolution and strategic value.
Deep Dive Analysis
16 Topic Outline
Introduction to Christine Itwaru and Product Ops
Defining Product Operations and its Relationship to PM
The Emergence and Growth of Product Ops in 2019
Specific Responsibilities and Activities of Product Ops
Product Ops in B2B vs. B2C Companies
Convincing Leaders and PMs of Product Ops Value
Core Responsibilities PMs Should Never Offload
Product Ops as a Solution to Inefficiency vs. Growth
Signs Your Company Needs a Product Ops Team
The Line Between Product Ops and Product Marketing
Who is a Good Fit for a Product Ops Role
Red Flags When Considering a Product Ops Role
Pendo's Product Team Structure and Product Ops Integration
Recommended Books and Podcasts
Favorite SaaS Products and Interview Questions
Impactful Change in Pendo's Product Development Process
5 Key Concepts
Product Operations (Product Ops)
Product operations is defined in two ways: first, as the creation of systems that enable product managers and teams to thrive; second, as a person or group of people who partner with product managers and act as strategic advisors to product leaders, leveraging qualitative and quantitative data to inform decisions.
Voice of Customer Management
This involves aggregating and synthesizing diverse customer inputs, including quantitative and qualitative data from sales, success, and internal teams, to provide product managers with clear, actionable insights. It also includes educating revenue teams on product capabilities and customer experience.
Product-Led Growth
A strategy where the product itself drives customer acquisition, retention, and expansion. Product operations supports this by creating in-app educational experiences and playbooks that reduce friction and increase engagement, working alongside product marketing.
Cross-functional Transparency
The open sharing of information and alignment across different internal teams (e.g., product, sales, customer success, marketing). A lack of transparency can lead to issues like poor product launches and misaligned customer expectations, which product ops aims to resolve.
Product Readiness
Ensuring that both internal teams and external customers are prepared for new product features or changes. This goes beyond simply announcing a launch date to providing context, training, and positioning guidance so that everyone understands the value and how to utilize or communicate about the new offering.
10 Questions Answered
Product ops is the creation of systems that help product teams thrive and also refers to individuals who partner with product managers and advise product leaders using data to make strategic decisions. It's about providing structure and support to product management.
The role's emergence is linked to a growing need for voice of customer management, internal alignment, transparency to stakeholders, and the rapid growth of product-led tactics, especially since 2019. It's a natural evolution as the product function matures within organizations.
Product ops teams manage voice of customer feedback, optimize product tooling, develop content strategy for in-app education, and streamline product development processes, especially in less mature organizations.
No, while it's often seen more in B2B, product ops is also utilized in B2C companies, particularly larger, well-established ones. The common thread is the need for cross-functional transparency and readiness, regardless of industry.
Effective arguments include highlighting how product ops frees PMs to spend more time with customers, improves the quality of inbound questions to the product team, and ensures consistent, scalable measurement of outcomes across the organization.
A Product Manager should never give up spending time with customers, observing their pain, and truly understanding their needs. This direct customer interaction is fundamental to building better products and is a defining aspect of the PM role.
Not necessarily; while some might view ops roles as band-aids for inefficiency, product ops often signifies growth and opportunity, helping maturing organizations stay aligned. The goal of product ops is to stand up necessary systems and processes, then automate or offload them to focus on more strategic value.
Key signs include a lack of transparency across internal teams (up, down, and across), poor product launches due to a lack of organizational readiness, and product managers spending excessive time firefighting internal questions instead of focusing on customers.
Product marketing focuses on positioning products, helping revenue teams sell, and driving lead generation and campaigns. Product ops, in contrast, focuses on educating internal teams about product value, usage, and impact on their roles, ensuring internal readiness and understanding.
Individuals who love creating healthy team environments, fostering cross-functional collaboration, empowering teams, and are curious about the inner workings of the business are a good fit. Problem-solvers who want to contribute beyond building new features, especially those comfortable with letting go of tasks as systems mature, thrive in this role.
14 Actionable Insights
1. Prioritize Direct Customer Interaction
Product Managers must prioritize spending time with customers to observe their pain points firsthand, as this direct observation is crucial for understanding problems and developing effective solutions.
2. Involve Engineers in Customer Feedback
Actively involve engineers in observing customer pain and delight directly. This firsthand exposure to customer experience is ’life-changing’ for the engineering team, increasing their empathy and motivation to build better products.
3. Implement Product Ops Systems
Create systems to enhance product management efficiency and allow your team to thrive. Product Operations can be a ’thing’ (a system) or a ‘person/team’ dedicated to building these structures.
4. Clearly Define PM Responsibilities
To avoid friction and ensure effective collaboration with Product Ops, clearly define what Product Managers are responsible and accountable for, focusing on core tasks like customer interaction and engineering collaboration.
5. Automate & Evolve Product Ops Functions
Product Ops professionals should aim to stand up processes and systems, then automate or hand them off to focus on higher-level strategic value, preventing the role from becoming a permanent ‘band-aid’ for inefficiency.
6. Synthesize Voice of Customer Data
Implement a robust voice of customer (VoC) management system that synthesizes both qualitative and quantitative data. This provides Product Managers with validated, aggregated customer insights, reducing their manual data filtering.
7. Facilitate Cross-Functional VoC Sharing
Bring together cross-functional teams (e.g., sales, success, product) to share and discuss Voice of Customer insights. This fosters internal alignment, educates stakeholders, and helps identify non-product solutions to customer friction.
8. Integrate In-App Education
Weave in-app content and education directly into the product development lifecycle, treating it as part of the ‘definition of done.’ This reduces customer friction, drives engagement, and supports product-led growth.
9. Optimize PM Tool Stack
Ensure the Product Manager’s tool stack (e.g., Pendo, Salesforce) is optimized and integrated to provide a complete data picture. This improves PM efficiency by giving them necessary insights without manual effort.
10. Streamline Planning Process (Initial Product Ops)
When first establishing Product Ops, prioritize streamlining the product planning process. This provides immediate value by bringing consistency and efficiency to less mature product organizations.
11. Articulate Product Ops Value to Leaders
To gain buy-in from product leaders, emphasize how Product Ops frees PMs from constant revenue team questions, allowing them to focus on customer interaction, and how it scales outcome measurement and transparency across the organization.
12. Seek Opportunities to Give Back
Actively look for ways to contribute back to your professional community. Giving back can lead to unexpected connections and personal growth, as demonstrated by Ben Williams connecting Christine to the podcast.
13. Be Intentional in Product Ops Career
If pursuing a Product Ops career, be intentional about your strengths and what you want to do, as the role’s definition varies significantly across companies and industries.
14. Look for Clear Metrics in Job Descriptions
Avoid Product Ops roles that lack clear metrics or a defined understanding of successful outcomes in their job descriptions. A lack of defined outcomes suggests the company may not fully understand the role’s purpose.
5 Key Quotes
I don't think the things are new. Absolutely. And that's what, when I go back to the story about Ben, it's like, I'm like, no, none of this stuff feels really interesting. And, you know, it's just stuff that we have to deal with in product.
Christine Itwaru
If you're saying there's customers that have friction around this one area of this product, maybe it's enabling. Maybe it's something that we need to help you guys understand a little bit better so that you can make their experience better.
Christine Itwaru
Speaking as a former PM, I would not ever give up spending time with customers and watching their pain. That sounds really bad customers, I'm sorry. But, you know, that's how I fell in love with product...
Christine Itwaru
If you don't love solving problems through building brand new features and building a product, then how can you help contribute to solving other ones if you're a true problem solver, think about whether you want to do that.
Christine Itwaru
If you're not doing that as a product manager or product leader, you better get on that train real fast because it's life changing for the entire team.
Christine Itwaru