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3 Pillars of Product Operations (and why they matter to TPMs)
A better understanding of Product Operations amplifies your impact as a TPM
James Dayhuff
December 10, 2024
(6 minute read)
👋 Hey TPM Craftsmen, let’s get crafting.
This newsletter edition is focused on the Product Management.
What’s inside?
👨🏫 Learn: 3 Pillars of Product Operations (and why they matter to TPMs)
🤝 People: Dr Bart Jaworski, Product Manager!
📚 Resource: Product Operations book by Melissa Perri
Learn
👨🏫 3 Pillars of Product Operations (and why they matter to TPMs)
Let me start off by stating the obvious: If you’re subscribed to this newsletter, you probably want to become a high-impact Technical Program Manager.
You and I are both on that journey together.
There is plenty of advice out there about how to ramp up your technical versatility by learning System Design and other technical concepts. This is, undoubtedly, a very important part of being a technical program manager.
However, a highly technical TPM won’t get very far if they don’t understand how to “play ball” with product management.
It’s tough, I know. There’s so much to learn. Context switching between the technical details, the program execution, and product strategy can become exhausting.
However, your ability to build a bridge between those contexts is a huge reason why Technical Program Managers like yourself are so highly valued when the job is done right.
In this post, you and I will have a minute to dive into the world of product operations.
Why do Product Operations matter to Technical Program Managers?
Let me start by asking this: Why do we do what we do?
This might sound like an odd question, but it’s an important one!
The reason any software company builds anything is to have an impact. An outcome. To live up to a sense of purpose. In the process of shipping product, we must protect this core value of delivering outcomes at all costs.
As a TPM, you must do all you can to guarantee meaningful outcomes of work.
Sure, system design will help you talk with engineers.
But what about your ability to talk with product managers?
A beautifully designed system is irrelevant if it doesn’t solve the right customer problem. Product Operations ensures teams are building the right things in the right way. And you, the TPM, is critical to that process. You operate within it.
You must understand the world and language of Product Management and Operations.
What’s at risk if you don’t understand Product Operations?
Weak narratives that don’t build buy-in on important initiatives
Wasted effort on initiatives that don’t have any business or customer impact
Failed delivery of outcomes on important initiatives
Frustrated cross-functional groups miscommunicating important details
Product Operations: a 10,000ft view
Without delaying any further, let’s get into the details of Product Operations.
The framework that I am about to walk through is not my own creation. It is the creation of a much more expert product professional: Melissa Perri. She shares her perpsective in the book Product Operations: how companies build better products at scale. (This is not a sponsored post, it is just a good book).
There are 3 pillars which she details in her book that provide a good framework to understand the world of Product Operations and subsequently, the world in which product managers operate.
Business Data and Insights
Customer and Market Insights
Process and Practices
Let’s dive in.
Pillar 1: Business Data and Insights
This pillar enables the collection and analysis of internal data for startegy creation and monitoring. It provides leaders with a view that tracks the progress of outcomes so they can reconcile research and development (R&D) spend and return on investment (ROI). In additional, it contextualizes the business metrics, like ARR and retention, with product metrics to help leaders and product managers make strategic decisions.
This first pillar is like a compass. It is where we can confirm we’re reaching the intended outcomes that we set out to deliver.
Do we understand what we have already shipped?
Do we understand customer usage patterns?
Do we understand the context of this data?
Is our strategic intent being realized?
What is the expected ROI of a given initiative?
How can you, as a TPM, integrate your efforts with this pillar?
Think of a time where you’ve too few engineers relative to the aspirations of leadership to ship product. It happens all the time.
You’re experience a priority conflict.
When you program has a conflict where the same engineering capacity is required by multiple initiatives, you role is to stay objective. Instead of getting into a political battle of who-knows-who, go back to the data.
Here are a few questions you can ask from a product perspective to help facilitate a healthy data-driven decision:
Which initiative will impact the most important business metric?
Which initiative has the greatest potential ROI?
Which initiative has the greatest cost of delay?
Prioritization is just one example of how you, as the expert TPM in the room, can partner with product within this first pillar to make data-driven decisions.
Pillar 2: Customer and Market Insights
This pillar facilitates and aggregates research that we receive externally. It streamlines the insights we receive directly from our customers and users and making them easily accessible for team members to explore. It is providing the teams with the tools they need to conduct market research for potential product ideas.
Anyone else have kids that love the movie Moana? In the story, the main character becomes a Wayfinder. She learns to use the stars to navigate the ocean to get to where she wants to go.
This is different from operational and current-feature data in the first pillar. This data is a first-class citizen in setting strategic intent for the company.
How can you, as a TPM, integrate your efforts with this pillar?
Building buy-in can be really tough on complex, large initiatives. But you know what helps build buy-in really effectively? A story.
Story-telling, ie having a strong narrative, is the secret sauce to any great product manager. You can also build this skill with them, but the role of the product manager is primarily responsible for identifying the data that tells the story.
Whatever you’re working on today, do a little experiment by looking back on the data-driven story telling that is backing your initiative. If this is a weak point, I bet you’re having a hard time getting people to care.
Work with product teams to surface customer pain points from engineering incidents or feature feedback loops, and weave these insights into the broader story of why an initiative matters.
As you build a stronger narrative you’ll see the process of building buy-in become smoother.
Pillar 3: Process and Practices
This pillar scales product management value with consistent cross-functional practices and frameworks. It defines the product operating model for the company, which specifies a few things: how the company creates and deploys strateg, how cross-functional teams collaborate around strategy and deployment, and how product management team functions. Product governance and tool management also fall under this area.
You are absolutely critical to this pillar, especially for the largest and gnarliest initiatives.
This pillar is the execution and delivery of everything we learn from pillars 1 and 2. Without this pillar, we end up with a company holding onto a bunch of good ideas but no way to move forward with them!
How can you, as a TPM, integrate your efforts with this pillar?
I sincerely hope you get excited about this pillar. This is your chance to enter the scene in a couple different ways:
Work in the system: Be a high-impact operator within the defined structure of this pillar.
Work on the system: Be a thought-leader in helping craft these cross-functional practices for scaled delivery of highly valuable initiative.
In either scenario, your chance for impact here is massive. You’ve got that program management experience. You’re an expert in cross-functional execution. Lean into that! For example:
Propose a streamlined method to report on major initiatives
Build a cross-cutting jira dashboard that gives multi-org visibility
Establish and facilitate a cadence of planning with product
Up-level documentation standards for the product process
Facilitate cross-org initiatives smoothly so product can focus on pillars 1 and 2
Wrap Up
This 3 pillar framework can help you understand the world of product management so that you can be a high-impact partner.
You need to be a strategic partner, not just an execution enabler. That means being a strategic partner not just for engineering but also product.
Just as you design systems for scalability and reliability, you should think about product operations as the system that ensures the right product is being built to begin with. Your ability to understand engineering trade-offs and connect them to customer and business data makes you a key player in aligning all three pillars.
Take a moment today to reflect: Which of these three pillars are you excelling at? Where can you grow?
By leaning into Product Operations, you’ll not only amplify your impact but also unlock better outcomes for your teams and customers.
(📧 I’m interested to hear your thoughts on this post, feel free to respond directly with any thoughts or additions to these concepts!)
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People
🤝 Dr Bart Jaworski, Product Manager
I’ll be honest, I don’t know him personally.
But if you like Product Management and a good meme, you’ll enjoy adding Dr Bart Jaworski to your Linkedin Feed! I’ve enjoyed his content over the past couple years as peel back the many layers of Product Management.
