Gavin Deadman
Archive for the ‘Product Management’ Category
Beyond the Handoff Culture: How To Collaborate in a Post-Pandemic World
Posted: Jun 15, 2023 in Business, Leadership, Product ManagementTags: Business, product development, Product Management, Product Manager
1
Product Direction: How to build successful products at scale with Strategy, Roadmaps, and Objectives and Key Results (OKRs)
Posted: Apr 16, 2023 in Book Reviews, Data, Leadership, Product ManagementTags: Business, key results, Objectives, OKRs, Product Roadmaps, Product Strategy, Roadmap, strategy
A well-balanced, accurate, and modern data-driven approach to Product Strategy and Roadmapping. Nacho Bassino’s hands-on product experience came through as he tackled all of the controversial points raised across the industry with product strategies and especially product roadmaps – now, next, future vs. dates. There wasn’t anything I disagreed with, everything was spot on, and this book is a testament to how far the industry has come over the past decade.
“By going everywhere, we were going nowhere. We didn’t have a problem with resources; we had a problem with focus.”
“Obtaining data about the user, business, market, competitors, macroeconomic conditions, and so on should be an ongoing process for an empowered product team.”
“Your product roadmap is the prototype for your strategy.” – Todd Lombardo
“We don’t hire smart people to tell them what to do. We hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.” – Steve Jobs
“Outcome-orientation is the single most crucial transformation a product organisation can make, and the strategic roadmap can be a keystone artifact to achieve it.”
Sprint: How to Solve Big Business Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days
Posted: Apr 10, 2023 in Book Reviews, Business, Guides, Product ManagementTags: Design Spint, Experimentation, Hypothesis, Lean, Product, product development, Product Management, Validated Learning
Since the book publication in 2016, the Design Sprint process has become a familiar approach to efficiently solving big business problems/validating hypothesis that involve high amounts of complexity/uncertainty/risk, and Jake gives the background as to how Design Sprints originated along with an in-depth account of how they went through the process to test some ideas at Google Ventures.
Covering a variety of different experiments which they ran/problems they addressed made it a good read, including Slack (finding the best way to explain Slack to non-tech customers), Savioke Hotels (how hotel guests would react to a robot with personality, by experimenting through a robot delivering a toothbrush to a guests room), Flatiron Health (dealing with the complexities of getting cancer patients into clinical trials), and Blue Bottle Coffee (getting their value proposition clear on a new digital experience).
The book is practical, so if you’re new to Design Sprints, you’ll find it easy to create a plan which you can apply across your product as well as understand the key ingredients needed, so whilst tools have evolved to make it easier more than ever to validate a hypothesis in a remote world for digital products using the likes of Figma, Miro, UserTesting… the fundamentals haven’t changed in that you need to:
- Collaborate with people throughout the sprint
- Have a decision maker (normally Product Manager)
- Identify a high priority problem to solve
- Ideate and create prototype/s
- Get feedback from potential customers
“When you get into a regular rhythm of listening to customers, it can remind you why you’re working so hard in the first place.”
Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader
Posted: Feb 12, 2023 in Book Reviews, Leadership, Product ManagementTags: Book Review, Business, Leadership, product leadership
The majority of leadership books talk about what leadership is and what a good leader looks like, but I liked Herminia’s fresh and practical approach that the best way to learn is by doing and therefore the book focuses on how you can take practical steps to improve your leadership skills (worth noting that before you can act, you need the courage to be vulnerable first).
“Action-changing how you do your job, how you build and use your network, and how you express yourself-gives you outsight, the fresh, external perspective you need to understand more deeply what is involved in the work of leadership and to motivate yourself to do it.”
What it means to act like a leader:
- Bridging across diverse people and groups.
- Envisioning new possibilities.
- Engaging people in the change process.
- Embodying the change.
The five things you can do to begin to make your job a platform for expanding your leadership:
- Develop your situation sensors.
- Get involved in projects outside your area.
- Participate in extracurricular activities.
- Communicate your personal “why.”
- Create slack in your schedule.
“The fastest way to change yourself is to spend time with people who are already the way you want to be.”
“Sometimes we so fully internalize what other people think is right for us that we don’t ever become what Harvard psychologist Robert Kegan calls ‘self-authoring’.”
“The idea of a learning economy is compelling, and where years ago many leaders would have said that the company is ‘as good as its people’, they would now say that an organisation is as good as its people’s ability to learn, develop, innovate and adapt.”
Hiring Product Managers: Using Product EQ to go beyond culture and skills
Posted: Dec 29, 2022 in Book Reviews, Guides, Product Management, RecruitmentTags: Culture, EQ, Product, Product Management, Product Manager
This is the shortest book I’ve read at under 80 pages, but it didn’t need to be more as Kate got the key points and advice across perfectly-telling a story of how a new product director struggled at first by just focusing on the practical elements of product management, but then they turned the product org around by doubling down on Product EQ skills which had a knock-on effect to the culture in a positive way.
What a product practitioner at any level should be working toward is the ability to balance technical skills with human skills and as the story progresses Kate explains the 7S framework and how the seven elements of an org changes, pulls, or pushes on one element will create change in all others: Strategy, Structure, Systems, Shared Values, Skills, Style, Staff.
I specifically liked how Kate split out the product practice into technical skills (what work is done) and human skills (how the work is done) using example skills in a table.
“Product people select from a variety of tools that live in our virtual toolbox to solve a problem. Given that the technologies we’re working with are often new, there’s no sure way to solve that problem, so there’s a lot of experimentation and trial and error. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t-but teams of product people won’t know for sure until they try.”
“It takes a lot of practice, and it takes a special set of skills to be that person who can continually experiment in times of stress and pressure. It also requires a unique type of leadership and culture to empower teams to do just that.”
“Organisations with greater levels of both inherent and acquired diversity were 45 percent more likely to report an increase in market share over the previous year and were 70 percent more likely to capture a new market.”
“Deliberate reflection points-like retros-are key to organisational learning, and that individuals can perform up to 23 percent better after consistently reflecting on their work than they are by doing more work.”
Product Management’s Sacred Seven
Posted: Dec 26, 2022 in Book Reviews, Product ManagementTags: Business, data, Growth, Marketing, Product, Product Management, Product Manager, Psychology
Neel, Parth, and Aditya spoke to 67 product leaders from 52 companies to find out what knowledge separates interview candidates they hire from those that don’t, as well as what hard skills help Product Managers move up in their careers the fastest at their companies.
The outcome of the study is that seven areas were common across the board – Product Management’s Sacred Seven:
- Product Design
- Economics
- Psychology
- User Experience
- Data Science
- Law & Policy
- Marketing & Growth
The authors describe these areas comprehensively in over 600 pages, with an engaging structure to every chapter – a plethora of images and diagrams to help visualise the key points they make throughout the book.
Since the authors have worked within the FAANG network, the majority of stories told to help explain practices are from this network of digital products and their competitors making the stories relatable and easy to digest.
“Creating simple, easy-to-use products that account for humans’ shortcomings is a great way to make products that people will love.”
“So while we’ve talked at length about the importance of quantitative metrics, you can’t put on your blinders and ignore everything else. The qualitative side matters, especially for the long term.”
Leading Product Management: How to Create a High-Performance Product Management Organisation
Posted: Nov 26, 2022 in Book Reviews, Business, Leadership, Product ManagementTags: Business, Business Acumen, Leadership, Mindset, Product, product leadership, Product Management, Product Manager
This is the most practical book on how to lead and build a high-performing product management organisation. It’s another classic from Haines where he rightfully refers to the importance of business acumen and how to level up in this area throughout the book.
Whilst there are plenty of product leadership books out there, there are few that focus on leading product management as an organisation and practical steps to get product teams to high maturity. The book includes plenty of visuals and charts making it easy to understand and apply learnings.
What’s covered in detail:
- Designing an org strategy for Product Management
- Aligning R&Rs
- Optimising Product Management processes
- Managing the Product Manager talent pool
- Cultivating and shaping Product Managers with competency self-assessments and maturity scores
- Product Mindset
- Building a Community of Practice (CoP)
- Cross-functional product teams
- Sustaining Product Management
- Product portfolio management
Whilst Haines details the full R&R of the Product Manager job, he summarises it nicely into 6 core attributes:
- Strategic & Critical Thinking
- Entrepreneurial
- Decision-Making
- Leading & Influencing
- Domain & Technology
- Data & Analytics
This book is a must-read for any product leader (head of product, director, CPO, coaches, change management).
ILM Leadership & Management Level 3
Posted: Sep 6, 2022 in Leadership, Product ManagementTags: Business, coaching, Leadership, Learning, Management, servant leadership
Over the past few months, I’ve enjoyed working through the ILM Leadership & Management level 3 course, with the most impactful learning experience being the breakout rooms with my fellow Flutter Entertainment colleagues during our weekly sessions. Whilst they were sometimes intense, it made the learning experience all the more impactful.
Most impactful model: The four stages of competence
Most favourite modules: Servant-leadership, coaching, developing others, and understanding my management and leadership point of view
Creating Magic: 10 Common Sense Leadership Strategies from a Life at Disney
Posted: Aug 28, 2022 in Book Reviews, Leadership, Product ManagementTags: books, coaching, disney, Leadership, Learning, Management, servant leadership, Stratagy, walt disney
Enjoyed reading Lee’s inspiring story of going from a farm boy to the VP of Walt Disney, made up of grit, resilience, character, and a lifelong learning mindset.
Written in an authentic way making it an easy read and hard to put down, Lee Cockerell shares what he’s learnt through these 10 leadership strategies with a practical breakdown within each:
1. Remember, everyone is important
2. Break the mold (drive change)
3. Make your people your brand
4. Create magic through training (coaching, servant-leadership, empowerment)
5. Eliminate hassles
6. Learn the truth
7. Burn the free fuel (appreciation, recognition, encouragement (ARE))
8. Stay ahead of the pack (lifelong learning)
9. Be careful what you say and do
10. Develop character
“That’s your job as a leader: to help your business grow by paying attention to your employees and your customers and by constantly fine-tuning your processes – so that every job gets done efficiently and without hassles.”
“In times of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in the world that no longer exists…in other words, great leaders need to be lifelong learners.”
My Product Top Tip
Posted: Aug 7, 2022 in Product ManagementTags: data, Prioritisation, Problem Solving, Product Management
Know your customers through qual and quant data, then prioritise their problems ruthlessly.
Product Managers Working Closer With Development Teams
Posted: Aug 6, 2022 in Business, Product ManagementTags: Agile, Development, digital transformations, Lean, Product Management, Product Manager
Stakeholder Collaboration in Product Management
Posted: Jul 7, 2022 in Guides, Product ManagementTags: Collaboration, Product Management
It was a pleasure to contribute to the Trusted Tech Talk roundtable discussion on stakeholder collaboration in product management. Maxwell Bond who organised it has crafted this fantastic whitepaper summarising the discussion which includes some handy tips for product managers.
Escaping the Build Trap
Posted: Jul 3, 2022 in Book Reviews, Business, Product ManagementTags: Business, Experimentation, Learning, Product, Product Management
This book by Melissa Perri gives a great view on what it takes to transform a business towards achieving sustainable growth by developing, optimising, and scaling the product organisation.
“Product managers connect the dots. They take input from customer research, expert information, market research, business direction, experiment results, and data analysis. Then they sift through and analyze that information using it to create a product vision that will help to further the company and to solve customer’ needs.”
“Product ownership is just a piece of product management.”
“You need the discipline to move toward organizing for products over projects. Companies that optimize their products to achieve value are called product-led organizations.”
“Product-led companies understand that the success of their products is the primary driver of growth and value for their company.”
“Having a strong product leader in the C-Suite is a critical step to becoming product-led. Unfortunately, there are not many CPOs available on the market at the moment.”
“Whenever I start a new training or workshop, I say to product managers, “Raise your hand if you went back and iterated in the last thing you shipped.” Normally, 15-20% of the people raise their hands. My next question is, “How do you know that what you shipped was successful?” The answer here usually revolve around meeting a deadline and finishing with bug-free code.”
A recommendation for anyone with ‘product’ in their job title, and CEOs.
My Mental Health Journey
Posted: Jun 7, 2022 in Product Management, PsychologyTags: Anxiety, Health, Imposter Syndrome, Mental Health, Product Manager, Stress
This is the first time I’ve shared my mental health journey with anyone, so I’m grateful to Betfair / Flutter for giving me this opportunity to contribute to The Gameplan Podcast series on Mental Health.
Customer Satisfaction is Worthless, Customer Loyalty is Priceless
Posted: Jun 5, 2022 in Book Reviews, Marketing, Product ManagementTags: Customer experience, Customer service, Customers, Marketing, Product Management, retention
This is by far the most dramatic book I’ve read on customer retention, but I really enjoyed it.
Even though the book is over 20 years old, the majority of content and principles are not only still relevant when it comes to customer service and customer experience for digital products, but also when collaborating with stakeholders as the book touches on the importance of telling people who have a problem to solve that you understand how they feel, empathising, listening…
I particularly enjoyed reading about Jeffrey Gitomer’s personal stories/learning experiences and the last chapter ‘Lessons you never learned in school (are the ones you need to succeed)’ is pure gold, full of practical tips on self-development which was totally unexpected.
“Satisfied customers will shop anyplace. Loyal customers will fight before they switch – and they proactively refer people to buy from you.”
“The CEO, or owner of your company does not pay you…the customer pays you.”
“No matter how much people pay, they expect a quality product. If you’re selling price and sacrificing quality, eventually you will lose the business to someone with opposite thinking.”
“The biggest reason that positive endings don’t happen is because employees are trained in policies and rules, rather than principles.”
“If you take ownership of the problems, you take ownership of the customer. If you let them go away, someone else is sure to take care of them that day – and for days beyond.”
On schooling..”I’m recommending we supplement the stuff that makes us excellent Trivial Pursuit and Jeopardy players (Geography, Literature, History), for the information and lessons we could really use (Attitude, Goals, Responsibility).”
“If these characteristics of successful people seem so simple, how come they’re so difficult to master? Answer: your lack of personal self-discipline and a dedication to life-long learning.”
How can Product Managers encourage more teammates to use data?
Posted: May 6, 2022 in Business, Data, Product ManagementTags: data, Product Management, Product Manager
It was a pleasure to contribute to this article on how Product Manager’s can encourage more teammates to use data. Full article can be found here.
“Working with data helps companies across the board to unlock their potential and become more productive and better at making decisions. However, making people in the team and company rely on data involves a lot of work. Product managers must often set a strategy, reinvent processes, and change organizational behavior.
To find out how to make more people in the team use data in decision-making and daily work, we spoke to product managers from different companies and industries. Their answers provide insights about the following:
- Which members of product teams can benefit most from using data?
- What are the key barriers to using data by all members of your product team?
- How to overcome the barriers mentioned above?
- What specific tactics can help to increase the adoption of data use in a product team?
- Which tools and apps are helpful for product teams?
Q: Which members of product teams can benefit most from using data?
Data is helpful to each and every member of the product team. Using a data-driven approach will make it easier to understand your customers, analyze metrics and anomalies, prioritize features, and be objective about decisions.
Let’s dig deeper into different roles in product teams using data:
Gavin Deadman (Lead Product Manager, Betfair at Flutter Entertainment Plc)
As product designers and developers conduct experiments to validate the impact of a product change, it will be crucial for them to first make sure they can measure success and then monitor the data as it goes live. Otherwise, it will be impossible to understand the ROI and celebrate success.
Q: What are the key barriers to using data by all members of the product team in your experience?
Data can help improve decision-making, gain competitive advantage, and transform the way the business operates. However, achieving these benefits can sometimes be challenging.
Based on PMs’ answers, product teams face three primary challenges to make their teammates use data:
- Building a data culture
- Consolidating data from different sources and making it accessible
- Providing quality of data and training in data interpretation
Gavin Deadman (Lead Product Manager, Betfair at Flutter Entertainment Plс)
All transactional, analytical, and qual data should ideally be in one tool, making it easy to access. Also, the speed of pulling the data is important. If data takes more than 10 seconds to load after each query it discourages people from using the tools.
Q: How did you overcome the barriers mentioned above?
As a product manager you should break silos, create a data-driven culture, and encourage members of your team to learn and provide accessible data.
Here is what the product managers we spoke to recommend:
Gavin Deadman (Lead Product Manager, Betfair at Flutter Entertainment Plс)
It’s helpful to prioritize the need to have front-end analytical data to connect to transactional data in one system and ask for updates weekly. Mentioning the impact helps to drive action.
Q: Can you share specific tactics that helped you increase the adoption of data use in your team?
There are some practices that can help product teams overcome the barriers to using data.
Our experts had the following key recommendations:
- Ask right questions to uncover challenges you’re facing and generate better solutions
- Use different KPIs to track the team and the product effectiveness and review core metrics on a regular basis
- Encourage team members to share and discuss data
- Set tools and processes for self-service data analysis
- Lead by example in the workplace
Gavin Deadman (Lead Product Manager, Betfair at Flutter Entertainment Plс)
One of the best things which has helped the team use data more is asking better questions to drive action. What do users think when there are multiple design options to choose from? How can we measure success? How will we measure the impact of product development work once we go live? What are our product’s strengths and weaknesses in the market? What are our top-10 customer support queries and how can we reduce them? What data do we have to inform us that the proposed solution will likely solve the problem?
Q: Which tools and apps are helpful for product teams to increase data usage in decision making?
Special tools and apps can help product teams use data to assess their development efforts, optimize performance, remove roadblocks, and increase customer satisfaction. Such instruments provide access to different types of data, and they have a modern infrastructure, high speed data access, and other capabilities.
The PMs we spoke to recommended these tools and apps for product teams to increase data usage in decision-making:
- Tableau
- Databricks
- Snowflake
- Excel or Google Sheets
- Firebase
- Looker
- Amplitude
- Google Data Studio
Gavin Deadman (Lead Product Manager, Betfair at Flutter Entertainment Plс)
My favorite tool is Tableau. Its data visualization options and data access speed are fantastic if architected appropriately, and it’s quite easy to load different types of data from different sources whether from the transactional DB, Google Analytics, or qual data from surveys. I also like Firebase analytics for app performance. I’ve had experience with Looker, but I’ve found Tableau to be more effective in terms of speed of querying the data, ease of using the tool, and analyzing trends in the tool itself.”
SAFe 5.0 Distilled: Achieving Business Agility with the Scaled Agile Framework
Posted: Apr 23, 2022 in Book Reviews, Business, Leadership, Product ManagementTags: Agile, books, Lean, Learning, Product Management, SAFe
After growing up using the LeSS framework, I’ve been looking forward to learning about SAFe in detail and comparing it to some of the myths associated with it.
Myth busters of SAFe:
1. Waterfall milestones ❌️ Products governed by self-managing mission-focused agile teams; objective measures and milestones based on working solutions, delivering early and incrementally ✔️
2. People organised in functional silos and temporary project teams ❌️ People organised in value streams/agile teams; continuous value flow ✔️
3. Overly detailed business cases based on speculative ROI ❌️ Lean business cases with MVP, business outcome hypothesis, Agile forecasting and estimating ✔️
4. Doesn’t support Lean Startup principles/innovation ❌️ SAFe Lean Startup Cycle to support high levels of uncertainty using the build-measure-learn Lean startup cycle ✔️
5. It’s not Agile ❌️ Thinking Lean and embracing agility combine to make up a new management approach with a Lean-Agile mindset which aligns with the values and principles in the Agile manifesto ✔️
6. It doesn’t have any compelling principles ❌️ SAFe is based on a set of Lean-Agile principles ✔️:
1. Take an economic view; deliver early and often
2. Apply systems thinking
3. Assume variability; preserve options
4. Build incrementally with fast, integrated learning cycles
5. Base milestones on objective evaluation of working systems
6. Visualise and limit WIP, reduce batch sizes, and manage queue lengths
7. Apply cadence; synchronise with cross-domain planning
8. Unlock the motivation of knowledge workers
9. Decentralise decision-making
10. Organise around value
Case studies show, that many enterprises – large and small – are getting extraordinary business results from adopting SAFe eg.
• 10-50% happier, more motivated employees
• 30-75% faster time-to-market
I particularly enjoyed reading about how important a continuous learning culture is to SAFe:
“In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work – brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment.”
“Our mindsets are the foundation for achieving success and happiness in life. With the right mindset, anything is possible.”
“Leadership is responsible for driving change proactively by ‘taking a stand’ for a better future state.”
I’d definitely recommend this book, especially for those who want to get an overview of where the Product Manager/PO split comes from.
The Lean Product Playbook
Posted: Apr 10, 2022 in Book Reviews, Product ManagementTags: Business, Customer Development, Design, Innovation, Lean, Product, product development, Product Management
This is the most comprehensive book I’ve read on lean product development.
The thing I loved most about this read by Dan Olsen is how the techniques he exposes are relevant across the whole product life cycle, so for a new product entering a new market or an enterprise level business improving a mature product in a competitive market, making it applicable to use some of the techniques for identifying/solving problems on existing products.
The book is focused around a framework called The Product-Market Fit Pyramid and The Lean Product Process which consists of six steps:
1. Determine your target audience
2. Identify underserved customer needs
3. Define your value proposition
4. Specify your minimum viable product (MVP) feature set
5. Create your MVP prototype
6. Test your MVP with customers
The writing style makes it easy to digest and therefore easy to run gap analysis on your current ways of working to spot any improvement areas.
A recommended read for anyone interested in customer development, lean UX, design thinking, product management, user experience design, agile development, lean startup, or analytics.
Certified Scrum Professional Product Owner
Posted: Feb 25, 2022 in Product ManagementTags: Business, Learning, Product, Product Management, Product Ownership
Chuffed to see this come through. Special thanks to Carlton Nettleton for the fantastic support over the past couple of months. Also to Jason Tanner, Anil and Ted Dikmen at Applied Frameworks for facilitating the coaching circles, providing such a brilliant online academy hub and overall learning experience.
Thanks also to Flutter Entertainment for funding my self-development.
Whether you’re interested in learning the basics of Agile product development, product management, product ownership or you want to take your product knowledge to the next level, I’d highly recommend the Scrum Alliance certified product owner track through Applied Frameworks where levels 2 and 3 are even more practical, will validate your understanding and give you some effective tools and techniques to help you handle ambiguity, get ahead in the market, innovate, and deliver products that customers love yet work for the business.
CSPO (Certified Scrum Product Owner) Level 1 – https://lnkd.in/gTDPV68H
– Great intro into Agile product development covering the fundamentals
A-CSPO (Advanced) Level 2 – https://lnkd.in/eUDJ4rF4
– Mastering the Product Backlog
– User Stories
– Rapid Vision Generation
– Roadmapping that Works
– Hypothesis Testing
– Solving Collaboration Challenges
– Facilitation
– Inclusive Solutions
– Product Owner Stance
– Scaling Scrum & Agile
CSP-PO (Professional) Level 3 – https://lnkd.in/eHbUfBEt
– Use Cases
– Value Proposition Design
– Business Model Framework
– Product Economics
– Launching New Products
– Evolution of Product Owner
– Frameworks Master Class
– Scaling Scrum & Agile II
– Lean Thinking
– Lift-off for Agile Teams
– Interactive Instructional Design
When taking level 3 it’s worth getting the Servant Leadership module bolted onto your account, normally part of the Scrum Master course, but relevant as you progress your career and I found it the most impactful module out of them all.
Marty Cagan “Straight Talk on Product Ops”
Posted: Jan 23, 2022 in Guides, Product ManagementTags: Product, Product Management, ProductOps
Marty Cagan, Partner at Silicon Valley Group gave a “Straight Talk on Product Ops” at the Lean Product Meetup in January followed by a fireside chat and Q&A.
Over 303 other product folk attended the live session wanting to hear from Marty about product ops.
Notes from the session:
- So many companies define Product Ops differently
- Some of the most toxic ones are taking off in some companies, important to raise the impacts so then it’s a conscious decision
- “Product Ops operates differently at every company” – Product School, this statement is not that helpful, it’s different in every company, but some companies have similarities
- We can’t even agree to decide what the common role of Product Manager is in the industry, so not surprised we’re in this situation with Product Ops
- Like Dev Ops, Design Ops, people have thought cool we’re going to provide product managers with real tools to help Product get products into production quicker
More than 50 companies got in touch with their definition of how they use product ops:
- The Reincarnated PMO Model – product ops facilitate planning activities, they gatekeep all of the product requests – most damaging, not all that common
- The Two-in-a-Box PM Model – handles the day to day tasks involved with development – it’s like getting product executives to do the day to day tasks – 2nd most serious problem, splitting the product manager role from connecting customers, other areas of the business and engineers, last thing you want to do is cut that person in half, innovation goes right down, slicing the job in half is disempowered, more damaging than helpful
- The Delegated Product Leader Model – Product Ops ensures our PM’s learn the necessary skills and techniques needed to connect the dots between the activities of the various product teams – like a personal coach to the product managers, this is something the VP of product (head of product) should do 1:1 coaching from an experienced product leader
- The Production Operations Rebranding Model – Product Ops job starts when the product /feature launches making sure that things run smoothly, they’re helping more around customer service, more like customer success ops, not really focused on product, this definition isn’t a problem
- The Product Marketing Manager Rebranding Model – Product Ops covers two main activities: synthesizing ongoing customer feedback from sales, services and support (GTM strategy incl. beta and early release programs). This is due to politics if product marketing doesn’t have headcount but needs all this done. This method is a good thing and feels it is a good modern definition of Product Ops.
- The Force Multiplier Model – best one, really empowering product teams with Qual & Quant insights, product tools eg. roadmaping and best practices, would be better moved to this new Product ops team than buried in UX team – the problem is that companies are staffing this role definition with junior people, should be more like principle product manager level. So the structure should be:
CPO:
- Product Management
- Product Design
- Product Ops – to empower product teams with Qual & Quant insights, tools and best practices
Nothing new in Product Ops from the different definitions, whilst The Force Multiplier Model isn’t new it’s well packaged and it came from Melissa from Escape the Build Trap. Solves the issue where UX have insights that no one does anything about. Puts the qual/quant insights squarely in product across all product managers – a more visible place where it has real value.
The two dangerous forces behind so many weak organizations:
- Scaling via Process rather than Leaders through people – SAFe is a good example of this
- Splitting the Product Manager Job – see 2nd definition above as an example, the product manager should focus on value and viability for the customer and not get involved in QA, design etc, there are people to handle this and the business should resource appropriately
Product Management 