The

Product Ops
Playbook
A Complete Guide for
Outcome-Focused Teams

B Y D R AG O N B OAT. I O
THE PRODUCT OPS PLAYBOOK

Table of Contents

Introduction 03

What’s the Mission of Product Operations? 04

How Can Teams Build a Strong Foundation for Product Ops? 05

Foster an Outcome-Driven Culture 06

Implement Responsive Product Portfolio Management 07

Develop Three Essential Pillars of Product Ops 09

What Does Product Operations Do? 10

Product and Portfolio Processes and Tooling 11

Strategic and Portfolio Planning 12

Portfolio Visibility and Stakeholder Engagement 12

Customer and User Engagement 13

Product Analytics, Experimentation and Launch Planning 13

Financial/Headcount Planning and Tracking 14

Product Tools and Vendor Management 14

Operational Excellence 14

Where Does Product Operations Sit in a Product Organization? 15

16

17

The Roadmap to Success for Product Ops 18

Starting 20

Growing 21

Mastering 21

Additional Resources 22

About Dragonboat 23
THE PRODUCT OPS PLAYBOOK

Introduction
product-centric

teams aligned and truly outcome-driven. But, how did we get here?

In the era of waterfall product management, decision-making was very top-down and one-directional,
with top executives calling the shots and little to no team involvement. Over the years, product teams
have become more empowered and outcome-driven.

Traditional Project Portfolio Responsive Product Portfolio

Align and empower with top down

Top down plan and control
alignment and bottoms up innovation

1980 2000 2020

The role of product has evolved from delivering projects to delivering customer delight and accelerating outcomes.

“
As scaling companies become more product-centric, misalignment, lack of
visibility, dependency management, and communication challenges rise
exponentially. As things change, it's critical to have a holistic view of product.
Product
This requires leaders to think of the product itself over individual features. operations
Viewing products in a product portfolio perspective rather than individual drove cultural
products will be beneficial in the long run. ‘This is where the role of product ops transformation
comes into play.
person global
Product ops is the golden thread connecting product, engineering, and product
customer success in order to accelerate portfolio outcomes. organization to
become a more
While more companies are hiring product ops professionals than ever, the role
itself is not as new as many would think. The skills of product operations have
“
disciplined,
data-driven
always been critical to a scaling product organization, but it's been called many
team.
things in the past.
Angela Song,
VP Product Operations,
PayPal

03
THE PRODUCT OPS PLAYBOOK

04
What’s the
Mission of Product
Operations?
Product operations' aim is to enable an effective, outcome-focused product
organization, and broadly speaking, a product-centric company, to achieve the
best customer, business, and portfolio outcomes.

What does an effective

product org look like?
You’ll find that it has:

01 The ability to scale without

the business-damaging chaos

02 Clarity on strategy across all levels

03 Data-informed, customer-inspired
decision making

04 05
A balance of long-term vision and
Responsive execution that short-term outcomes to win in the
delivers commitments current and future market
THE PRODUCT OPS PLAYBOOK

05
How Can
Teams Build
a Strong Foundation
for Product Ops?
THE PRODUCT OPS PLAYBOOK

Before building your product ops

function, make sure to have these key
elements in place to ensure its success:

" !
Outcome-Driven Responsive Product Three
Culture Portfolio Management Essential Pillars

1. Foster an Outcome-Driven Culture

What does it mean

to be outcome-driven
After reaching product-market fit, teams
that are outcome-driven avoid relying too
heavily on customer feedback to inform
“
You can't take
your old
(as opposed to their roadmaps as it rarely encourages organization
breakthrough product concepts needed based on feature
why does it matter? to achieve market leadership. teams,
roadmaps, and
Outcome-driven organizations allocate passive
resources to not only the short-term, incremental product improvements, but
managers, then
also to their long-term goals that are cross-functional in nature. These are the
overlay a
collaborative bets that could help the company to transform, keep its
technique from a
competitive edge, and grow radically. Most importantly, success is measured
radically different
by the progress made toward desired outcomes rather than output.
culture and
Since product ops’ mission is to accelerate portfolio outcomes, they must be
able to work within a company culture that is outcome-focused or help to lead work or change
“
expect that will

the transition with the support of a change agent, for example, the Chief anything.
Product Officer.
Marty Cagan,
Empowered: Ordinary
People, Extraordinary
Products

06
THE PRODUCT OPS PLAYBOOK

2. Implement Responsive
Product Portfolio Management
As outcome-focused teams scale, it’s important that they manage

can’t be built by a single team and unlike a project, a software product

is never considered “done.”

“
If you are planning quarter by quarter, team by team, or feature by feature,
as opposed to thinking about multi-quarter, multi-team initiatives, you are in
serious need of adopting portfolio management.
“
Rachel Weston Rowell,
SVP, Product & Technology COE at Insight Partners

for product-led organizations that dynamically connects objectives, customer

needs, products, and resources with execution to accelerate outcomes while
remaining responsive to the state of the organization and the market.

Responsive PPM enables tech leaders to align strategies and allocate resources
from the top and provide progress visibility from the bottom. The bi-directional
collaboration allows the entire organization to work together to achieve true
agility.

“
Sushila Nair,
Security Services, NTT Data Services

Companies need to take a portfolio product management approach to

ensure that not only the individual product or service meets the company “
needs, but that the business is prioritizing service development in line with
their business goals.

07
THE PRODUCT OPS PLAYBOOK

Reporting

Responsive Product Portfolio Management is the solution to running a modern, outcome-driven product organization built to scale.

Many product, program and engineering leaders have already been

following the Responsive PPM method at innovative companies
such as Netfllix, Spotify, Amazon and PayPal. However, this best
practice — until now — was carried out via a trial and error
approach using a myriad of spreadsheets, hallway chats,
and whiteboard sessions.

Fast forward to today, Dragonboat is the first comprehensive

solution to be built upon the responsive PPM framework to
enable a consistent practice with automated workflows.
It gives organizations a single source-of-truth for strategy
and execution, allowing leaders to align people and ideas
to goals, forecast and adjust staffing needs,
automatically update and predict progress, and enable
clarity and visibility across portfolios.

Without having the right tool, product ops would

struggle to help the team have the visibility it needs
to run itself effectively.

08
THE PRODUCT OPS PLAYBOOK

3. Develop Three Essential Pillars of Product Ops

With a strong base formed by an outcome-driven culture and a platform for
responsive product portfolio management, product ops can start building up its
three essential pillars (we will cover these more in-depth in the product ops

Enabling teams through efficiency and consistency

Facilitating vertical alignment with top-down goals and bottom-up innovation

Orchestrating cross-team collaboration with product teams and stakeholders

Here is a way to visualize all of these elements coming together:

Accelerate
Portfolio Outcomes

Facilitating Orchestrating
Enabling
vertical cross-team
teams
alignment collaboration

Outcome Driven Culture

Responsive Product Portfolio Platform

09
THE PRODUCT OPS PLAYBOOK

10
What Does Product
Operations Do?
THE PRODUCT OPS PLAYBOOK

Now that we know the basics of how to build a product

ops foundation, let’s take a greater look at the day-to-day
activities.
The product ops leader is the right-hand to the CPO, helping them access the right information that they need
to be an effective executive at all times. As such, product ops runs the strategic operations of a product
organization and their responsibilities tie directly to enabling an effective, outcome-focused product
organization.

The 8 Areas of Responsibility for Product Ops

Product and Portfolio Processes and Tooling

A modern product organization should run entirely on a product portfolio

01
process, both for the product teams and for all stakeholders interacting with
them. Setting the right foundation and adapting responsively to changes is one
of the most impactful areas of product operations.

This includes portfolio-level planning and tracking, as well as product

management and agile development process and tooling optimization,
integration, and best practices.

Therefore product ops evaluates, owns, and manages portfolio tooling, such as
Dragonboat, to enable a single source-of-truth that can then be accessible to
the entire company as appropriate. They’re the guardian of product portfolio
management best practices for the entire product organization.

“ We are growing fast and need the right solution for portfolio management
to connect roadmaps with OKRs and run our quarterly planning and
tracking. After I evaluated 25 tools, I finally found Dragonboat - the only
tool that suits all our use cases and is flexible to fit our ways of working,
not forcing us to follow the predefined framework. Finally, we can get rid “
of tons of tools and formats to keep all our product portfolio data
transparent and up-to-date.
Anton Zhvakin,
Senior Manager of Product Dev Ops at Miro

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THE PRODUCT OPS PLAYBOOK

Strategic and Portfolio Planning 02

Strategic Planning
Strategic operations start with aligning strategies at the executive level,
along with a relevant headcount, budget and allocation. This is often carried
out as strategic planning. To facilitate this, product ops lead strategic
offsites, quarterly planning, and OKR alignment with both product
executives and product teams.

Portfolio Planning
In addition, product ops is proficient at applying product portfolio
management best practices so that teams can navigate and balance:

01. Multiple goals

02. Competing stakeholder and customer requests
03. Prioritization best practices
04. Short term OKRs and the long term product vision

One of the most important keys to product

ops’ success in portfolio planning is managing
dependencies since they stall 90% of product 90% of product
teams at some point. Product ops plays a key teams have
role in portfolio planning and collaboration to
help identify, plan and track cross-team
been stalled by
prioritization and dependencies. This often dependencies.
takes place during quarterly planning and sets
up the portfolio for success.

Portfolio Visibility and Stakeholder Engagement 03

A common challenge that product leaders face is effective stakeholder
engagement. Product ops plays a pivotal role in defining effective interaction
and communication cadences through all levels of the organization, including
with executive leadership, within product organizations, and with
cross-functional teams e.g. sales, marketing, etc.

12
THE PRODUCT OPS PLAYBOOK

Customer and User Engagement 04

For individual product managers, it is often time-consuming to collect user
insights, correlate different data points, or try to recruit various customers/
target users for interviews and feedback sessions. Product operations helps
to form processes around users and customer engagement, allowing product
teams to be customer-centric.

Product ops also helps define and evolve the engagement model and
communication cadences between product and other teams that are customer
facing such as support, sales, marketing, etc.

If a product org doesn’t have a user research team, product ops often takes
on the task of helping product teams to recruit and manage user interviews
or vendors for user research.

Product Analytics, Experimentation

and Launch Planning 05
Analytics
In organizations where data may be scattered across various platforms or there
is a need to work with dedicated data teams for reporting, product ops may
help to standardize data definition. This way, they help ensure apple-to-apple
consistency for values across systems. Product ops may aid in building and
improving the data, access and definition processes for product teams.

Experimentation
Product ops may own the experimentation calendar to coordinate various
product experiments and A/B tests. They can manage the planning holistically
to ensure the quality of data and prevent conflicts.

Launch Planning
Product operations often acts as product’s liaison with the go-to-market team
to define the timing and scope of various GTM plans and activities reflecting
product delivery scope and schedule.

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THE PRODUCT OPS PLAYBOOK

Financial/Headcount Planning and Tracking 06

In partnership with product leaders, finance teams, and vendors, many product
ops teams are tasked with owning the product org’s budget, headcount, and
financial planning and tracking.

Not only that but product ops executives often play a key role in advising
product leaders on organizational design, career roadmapping, mentorship,
training, and other “people-related” topics.

Product Tools and Vendor Management 07

As product-centric companies grow and new product teams are added into the
mix, it’s important that they build with the same toolset. When different teams
all have their own tools for various tasks, it becomes increasingly complex to
manage dependencies across the product portfolio. By standardizing the use
of and processes related to tools team-wide, product teams can align easily.
This, in turn, enables the successful execution of larger, cross-team initiatives
that drastically move the needle.

Product operations coordinates tool evaluation for the product organization

and will collaborate with different users in the product team to understand
their needs and roll out a solution. Common team tools include product portfolio
management, design, user research, survey, analytics, collaboration tools, etc.
Product operations reduces the burden of vendor evaluation, management,
and pricing across the organization.

Operational Excellence 08
People Management
Product operations partners with product leadership and HR to create and
maintain the product organization’s interview process, onboarding process,
and product management training and coaching.

Templates
To increase consistency and efficiency, product operations partners with
product leadership and product managers to create templates for product
requirements, training, feedback collection, etc.

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THE PRODUCT OPS PLAYBOOK

15
Where Does
Product Operations
Sit in a Product
Organization?

Retain
Customers

Acquire
Accounts
THE PRODUCT OPS PLAYBOOK

Depending on the size of a product org, this role may

be carried out as a shared responsibility by a product leader,
a dedicated person, or even a dedicated team.
Most often, the product ops team reports to the Head of Product. If there are several product
operations team members, each might report to a different VP of Product who oversees a number
of product managers.

In this reporting structure, they may also be more involved in the PDLC (product development

The Two Types of Product Ops Roles

A product team might start by hiring a product analyst who is focused on data.
This person thinks about how the team is getting its data, the tools it uses, and
most importantly, how the team can connect all the dots. Many teams are great
at collecting and presenting data, but fall short when it’s time to identify
potential trends or insights that could be useful for making better decisions.

A product analyst will develop consistent reporting

to inform a product team’s strategy.

Retain
Customers

Acquire
Accounts

16
THE PRODUCT OPS PLAYBOOK

“
The second type of person in product operations is more engaged
in streamlining and improving processes across the product
Product Operations - the
organization. They think about tooling and all of the different
art of removing obstacles
“
processes from annual planning to roadmapping. They think about
how product engages with the different cross-functional teams to
from evidence-based
get their inputs. To help their teams improve these processes, decision making.
they must become an evangelist for best practices in the org and
Melissa Perri,
keep up-to-date with industry trends. CEO, Produxlabs

In a recent Dragonboat webinar, Denise Tilles, CPO at Grocket,

shared her thoughts on what kind of person is best suited for this
role,

“
Product operations are really able to understand the subtext behind challenges,
concerns, questions, and being able to address it. They are passionate about
consistency, someone who geeks out on having a process for this, a template
“
for that... They’re able to see the full picture and put those together.
Denise Tilles,
CPO, Grocket

As the product organization matures, product

operations will also become responsible for OKRs
and connecting product strategy to company goals.
In addition to the roles above, teams may also have
a product ops team member who is more holistically
focused on the product portfolio.

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THE PRODUCT OPS PLAYBOOK

18
The Roadmap
to Success
for Product
Ops
THE PRODUCT OPS PLAYBOOK

We’ve covered quite a lot thus far about the nature of product ops, their
responsibilities, and the ways they benefit a product organization. Now,
let’s take a look at a practical approach that teams can use for implementing it.

When getting started with product ops, aim to create an “MVPI,”

aka a minimum viable process improvement, and roll out incrementally.

It’s important to begin building the three product ops pillars simultaneously,
as a product ops function will collapse if it doesn’t have them all. However,
it’s possible to start with some basic building blocks for each and continue
adding more over time as the product organization matures.

The roadmap to product operations success below breaks down into three
levels: starting, growing, and mastering, and reveals what to focus on in each
of them.

Enable Align Collaborate

Teams Vertically Cross-Functionally
$

# %

Standardization Strategic Planning

Mastering Orchestrate Launches
Consistency On-Demand

Responsive Quarterly Alignment,

Growing Data, VOC Programs
Allocation, Trade-Off Dynamic Planning

PDLC, Cadences, Connect OKRs

Starting Stakeholder Visibility
Delivery with Initiatives

Responsive Product Portfolio Platform

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THE PRODUCT OPS PLAYBOOK

Starting
At this level, focus primarily on
building the base of each
Quick Wins for
pillar. To enable your team, a New Prod Ops Team*
first aim to standardize the
PDLC and establish a basic ENABLE TEAMS
set of cadences to ensure
team delivery for both Create a source-of-truth planning and tracking system
roadmaps and outcomes. that introduces trust and transparency across the
organization
Without a solid ability to
deliver, strategy won’t count Establish a quarterly planning/ bi-weekly check-in rhythm
for much. To empower
vertically, start with
ALIGN VERTICALLY
connecting goals or OKRs
with initiatives. Lastly, enable
Implement a quarterly planning and portfolio
stakeholder visibility not
roadmapping process
through meetings or slide
decks, but through a single
Connect OKRs with product initiatives
source-of-truth with a
platform.
Facilitate healthy discussions about cross-team
allocation and tradeoffs

Create and manage ongoing bi-weekly rhythm to review

OKR and roadmap progress across product teams

Incorporate feedback and requests in the product

planning and communication process

Build a scalable stakeholder engagement process with

* Recommended checklist

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THE PRODUCT OPS PLAYBOOK

Growing
Once your product ops organization passes the starting level, the next level
focuses on growing it to make more informed and effective decisions. This can
take the form of standardized product analytics, data access and definition,
and

In terms of vertical empowerment, product operations needs to guide

responsive allocation and trade-offs. Most product teams have no problem
prioritizing their own product focus, but it becomes harder across the portfolio,
so this is where product operations shines.

Lastly, product operations should help guide quarterly alignment and dynamic
planning to connect vision and long-term goals with mid-range milestones.

Mastering
At this point, everything should be functioning quite well in terms
of cadence, data, allocation, and connecting OKRs to initiatives.
In the final level, product operations moves into optimization
mode, tweaking and improving previous setups around
standardization and consistency.

It’s also necessary for product ops to make sure that readily
available data, nimble processes and effective cross-team

strategic planning on demand, instead of annual planning. This

empowers product teams and the whole company to adjust to
the market needs quickly.

At this level, orchestrating product launches also becomes

a primary focus as the speed of change that your product
organization can manage is far greater now.

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As the discipline of product management matures, product
operations will only continue to grow in importance to help
fast-growing organizations scale smoothly and accelerate
portfolio outcomes.

While getting a product ops function off the ground may seem daunting, the
impact product operations can have on the entire business can be felt vertically,
horizontally and cross-functionally.

Additional
Resources
&
See Tealium's story on how it built and scaled product ops.
&
Deepen your knowledge of responsive product portfolio
management by enrolling in the official certification course.
&
Read the article, “Product Operations, From One to Many”
by Joshua Mclaughlin, Product Ops Manager, Fullscript.

Apply to join our Outcome-Driven Product community on Slack.

&

Visit the Dragonboat and access

our webinars for more insights.

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Dragonboat is an all-in-one product
operations tool connecting OKRs,
customer needs, product strategies,
and resources with Agile execution.

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