What's the roadmap for product operations? | Justin Woods and Phil Hornby
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What defines the shape of product operations within different organizational structures?
But it kind of all depends on what's the shape of the organization and in particular the product management function or the product teams going to look like. That's the thing that's going to define the shape of product operations. I think you're right, though, that we're going to see product operations going from running the machine to designing the machine, using AI to synthesize that data.
Welcome to the Talking Roadmaps channel, where in series two, Phil and I have been talking about product operations. We've spoken to 25 guests around the product operations space, and in this series wrap up, we want to talk about what people agreed on, what they disagreed on, what stood out to Phil and I, and what we think product ops is becoming. Phil, would you add anything there?
I guess I'd just add that we thought long and hard about what makes Season 2, and we went for Product Ops because it was roadmap adjacent. I mean, we're already planning Season 3 as well, and that's, again, roadmap adjacent because we've got to be honest to ourselves. Our heritage is talking roadmaps. It seemed like a key theme that we should be talking about for the product space because it's just growing and growing, and there's only so much material out there. What I've loved, really loved, is that we've not just had the experts, we've had so many practitioners in this season. People really doing the job in real organisations and that's brought a unique spin to it for me. If you're enjoying the channel, subscribe, hit the bell icon and give us a like.
Yeah, I think so. What I took away was really that season two felt like it moved beyond what is product operations and more into how product ops works in the real world. And I think that goes into what you were saying about bringing the practitioners near that passion of all of them sort of talking about very similar things. But what really came through was their focus on their mission, what their value was, and really how tight knit that community of product operations people was.
philosophies of product ops that kind of came through to me I'm a very philosophical person someone said that to me the other day in the real world and it kind of it kind of chimed correctly I like to think deeply about things to kind of understand them and you know there's there's a couple of mental models that came through for me one is it's the product of management of product management. It's the people who maintain the product operating system of the organization. The really simple mindset, and I think it really traces back to a quote I remember from John Cutler, although he wasn't in this season, but it's something I've heard him say in the past. He would say processes are there whether you recognize them or not. And so there was one that was product operations being done, whether it's implicit or explicit, by naming it as product operations and
Actually putting people into the role that to me is just making it explicit and saying probably we're scaling and we need to find ways of doing things consistently and better and actually putting someone in the driving seat for that instead of it being something that happens off the side of someone's desk. Yeah, big time. Or, you know, often sits with leaders. I know it's been with me as a product leader. I ended up looking at product operations elements. And I know you for sure have done as well. I'm even doing parts of it now in my day job. I was only having a conversation about how are we going to use Jira the other day? And it's like, I don't even understand why I need to have the conversation at this point in time in product management, but I do. And so that's all part of how we're going to work. And those ways of working...
But hey, we're getting ahead of ourselves. Is product operations all about ways of working? Yeah, I think just picking up on some of the things that you said, a big takeaway for me was that product operations is increasingly essential. And like you said from John's quote...
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What defines the shape of product operations within different organizational structures?
0:00–6:49
2
How did Season 2 shift the focus from defining product ops to showing its real‑world impact?
6:49–13:23
3
Why is product operations more than just tool administration and how does it add strategic leverage?
13:23–19:50
4
When should a growing company invest in a dedicated product ops team versus keeping it informal?
19:50–25:58
5
What are the biggest tensions around product ops ownership of tools and process standardization?
25:58–32:26
6
How will AI change the role of product operations and its value‑creation activities?
32:26–38:14
7
What roadmap‑adjacent topics will the next season explore, especially around go‑to‑market strategies?
38:14–44:07