What Is Product Operations?

By Denise Tilles, Co-author of the book Product Operations. 
Updated October 2026.

Product operations is the function that helps product management scale. It gives product teams the inputs they need to set strategy, prioritize, and get work done: good data, real customer insight, and a consistent way of working.
 

Small product teams rarely need it. Everyone is close to the customer, the numbers are easy to pull, and decisions happen in a hallway conversation. That stops working as the company grows. Strategy drifts away from execution, teams build in silos, and customer feedback gets stuck in someone's inbox. Product managers end up spending their week chasing information instead of using it.
 

I saw the value of product operations in 2014, before I knew what to call it. As VP of Product at a B2B SaaS company in New York, I built a three-person team: a VP, a product analyst, and a user research analyst. Within a year they had identified and modeled an add-on product, and the Wizard of Oz experiment we ran earned $1MM in its first year.  

​

The Three Pillars of Product Operations

Business and data insights
Product teams need metrics that tie what they build to business results. Product ops sets up the dashboards, reporting rhythm, and data access that make that possible, including connecting the financial numbers to what actually ships.
 

Customer and market research
Growing companies lose touch with their customers. Product ops builds the path for feedback from sales calls, support tickets, and user research to reach the people making roadmap decisions, so it doesn't stall in one department.
 

Process and governance
Bigger product orgs need a shared way of working: a planning cadence, a roadmap format, a way to prioritize, and regular touchpoints with the rest of the business. Product ops sets enough of this to keep teams aligned without burying them in process.
 

When Do Companies Need Product Operations?
 

The need usually shows up at a few predictable moments.
 

• The product team grows past 15 or 20 people and informal coordination stops working.

• Leadership asks how a product is performing and nobody can answer quickly.

• Product managers spend more time gathering information than using it.

• Teams build conflicting roadmaps or duplicate each other's work.

• Sales, marketing, and product are working from different assumptions about what matters.
   

Companies like Anthropic, Sam's Club, OpenAI, Stripe, Uber, and athenahealth have built product operations for exactly these reasons.

​

Product Operations vs. Product Management
 

Product operations doesn't replace product management. Product managers own discovery, strategy, and delivery for their products. Product ops makes sure they have the information, tools, and processes to make those calls well, so they can spend their time on the product instead of hunting for inputs.
 

Product Operations and AI
​

The question I hear most from clients right now is how their teams should use AI. When we dig in, it almost always traces back to the operating model, or the lack of one.
 

AI makes it faster to produce things: a spec, an analysis, a prototype. But speed only helps when teams have the context to know what's worth producing. That context is what product operations supplies: the data, the customer insight, and a shared way of deciding. With a healthy operating model and solid product ops behind it, AI amplifies what your teams already do well. Without them, it undermines them faster.
 

Product Operations and the Operating Model
 

The operating model is how your company actually runs. It covers how strategy connects to execution, who decides what, how product works with everyone else, and how teams are measured and rewarded. If the operating model is the blueprint, product operations is the engine that keeps it running.
 

For years I focused on the engine. Working with clients, I kept running into the same thing: companies investing in product ops while the blueprint was missing. Nobody could say who owned which decisions. Sales was goaled one way and product another, so the two teams pulled against each other. Better product ops doesn't fix either of those.
 

That's the work I do now. I co-create operating models with executive teams, and product operations is one part of the picture.
 

Let's Talk

 

If your teams are working hard and the company still feels stuck, the problem may be how it runs. Book a conversation.
 

Go Deeper

​

The book
Product Operations, co-written with Melissa Perri. Implementation roadmaps, team structures, and case studies from companies that built the function well. Learn more or buy it on Amazon.
 

The podcast
The ultimate guide to product operations, on Lenny’s Podcast. Melissa and I cover what product ops is, when a company needs it, and how to get started. Listen.
 

The masterclass
The Product Operations Masterclass. For leaders standing up or growing a product ops team. See the next cohort.