Melissa Perri is the renowned author of "Escaping the Build Trap" and a well-known product consultant and educator. She has worked for a long time with Denise Tilles, another seasoned product leader, with whom she has been evangelising Product Operations to help scale product companies effectively. They recently collaborated on a book, coincidentally called "Product Operations", and we spoke all about the story behind the book and the themes within it.
The relationship between product management and sales teams is traditionally tricky, and a common complaint from B2B PMs. Saeed Khan and I are looking to help with this with an online course and we'd love your feedback on your relationship with sales. This will help shape the course and, if you want to take part when the course is ready, we'll give you a special discount.
Please fill in the survey here. Thanks!
1. Product Operations is about helping product managers make faster, better-quality decisions
It's important to dispel the myth of multi-armed product managers who can just do everything. There's too much for everyone to do! This creates barriers to doing great product management work and pulls product managers away from doing the real, value-add product management work that they're judged on.
2. There are three pillars of product operations...The three pillars are ways to think about how to organise enablement. They are "Business & Data Insights", "Customer & Market Insights" and "Process and Practices". They are all the foundation of good product decision-making, and all companies will have a certain level of maturity already.
3. ... But you don't need to build all the pillars all at onceYou don't need to fix everything at once. If you already have good capabilities in one or more areas, fix the ones that you don't have good capabilities in! You don't need to boil the ocean, just find the biggest gaps and opportunities to improve, and start to work on them.
4. Process shouldn't be seen as a dirty wordThere's such a thing as too much process but, even if you don't call it process or try to define it, all work involves a process. It's important to have people to oversee the process at scale, prevent duplication or rework, and make sure that process is right-sized rather than ever-expanding.
5. The first step is being honest about your current stateThere are plenty of ways to go with product operations as you scale, but the most important thing is being really honest with yourself about what your most important limiting factors are, what your product managers are spending time on and what's going to work for you.
Check out "Product Operations""Many companies want to reap the benefits of economies of scale that comes with being a product-led company. As our businesses change shape to focus more on software, so do our ways of working. We need to make sure we’re breaking down these silos of information and capabilities that arise at scale. To react quickly and set great Product Strategies, leaders and team members alike need access to high-quality data and a process to implement their decisions."
Check it out on Amazon or the book website.
Check out "Escaping the Build Trap""To stay competitive in today’s market, organizations need to adopt a culture of customer-centric practices that focus on outcomes rather than outputs. Companies that live and die by outputs often fall into the "build trap," cranking out features to meet their schedule rather than the customer’s needs. In this book, Melissa Perri explains how laying the foundation for great product management can help companies solve real customer problems while achieving business goals. "
Check it out on Amazon.
Contact Melissa & DeniseYou can catch up with Melissa at melissaperri.com, check out https://productinstitute.com or follow her on LinkedIn.
You can catch up with Denise at denisetilles.com or follow her on LinkedIn.
John Cutler's Hot Take - The Instagram-ification of Product Management is Driving us Crazy (with John Cutler, Product Educator & Author @ The Beautiful Mess)
Debbie Levitt's Hot Take - Democratising our Work means AI is Going to Steal all our Jobs Sooner (with Debbie Levitt, CXO @ DeltaCX and Author "Customers Know You Suck")
Knowing your Customers, Seeking Evidence and Sticking up for Continuous Discovery (with Hope Gurion, Product Leader and Team Coach @ Fearless Product)
Transforming your Organisation to the Product Operating Model (with Marty Cagan, Author "Inspired", "Empowered" and "Transformed")
Applying Product Management Principles to Life (with Miloš Belčević, Author "Build Your Way")
Standing up for User Research... and User Researchers (with Debbie Levitt, CXO @ DeltaCX and Author "Customers Know You Suck")
Building Great Companies through Community-Led Growth (with Lloyed Lobo, Author "From Grassroots to Greatness")
Harnessing Generative AI to Reimagine the Future of Product Management (with Shyvee Shi, Product Lead @ LinkedIn & Author "Reimagined: Building Products with Generative AI")
Enabling Strategic Product Decisions through Product Operations and Portfolio Management (with Becky Flint, CEO of Dragonboat)
Nailing your Brand Marketing by Embracing your Zone of Genius (with Orly Zeewy, Brand Strategy Consultant & Author ”Ready, Launch, Brand”)
Making Sure You Make an Impact through User Research (with Steve Portigal, User Research Consultant & Author ”Interviewing Users”)
Helping Superhero Startup Founders Stay Away from their Kryptonite (with Richard Blundell, Founder @ Vencha & Co-author ”The Go To Market Handbook for B2B SaaS Leaders”)
Making our Product Teams Stronger through Building Communities of Practice (with Petra Wille, Author ”Strong Product People” and ”Strong Product Communities”)
Going Beyond the Dreaded Product Demo and Creating the Perfect Sales Pitch (with April Dunford, Author ”Obviously Awesome” and ”Sales Pitch”)
Nailing your Product/Market Fit Strategy by Focusing on the Mission Critical (with Maja Voje, Growth Strategy Expert & Author ”Go-To-Market Strategist”)
Fearlessly Defeating the Four Horsemen of a Product-Friendly Culture (with Eisha Armstrong, Co-founder @ Vecteris & Author ”Productize” & ”Fearless”)
How to Build Products when the Founder IS the Product (with Saagar Bains, Fractional Product Leader & Former Head of Product @ The Body Coach)
Supporting the Next Generation of Female Product Managers with Women in Product UK (with Namrata Sarmah, Founder @ Women in Product UK & CPO @ INTO)
Paying Off Your Organisation’s Human Debt Through Agility & Psychological Safety (with Duena Blomstrom, Founder & CEO @ People Not Tech)
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
The Commercial Edge: Unleash the Power of People
The emPOWERed Half Hour
U.S Property Podcast
Aligned Money Show
Gorse Culture PODcast : The H.R. Detective Agency!
The Ramsey Show
Planet Money