You’ve read a few articles and blog posts about how product ops is on the rise and the value it can provide to your organization. So, you began building out your own product ops team. You determined the biggest areas of need and opportunity, then you hired the best people for the job. Now, the team has had some time to settle in.
Which means you can move on to the next step — measuring success.
Quantitative metrics
How large of an impact has the addition of a product ops function made on team effectiveness? You may have some anecdotal evidence of product ops gathering useful data and/or improving processes. However, as any metrics-driven product person knows, it’s helpful to share some hard numbers.
Since product ops lives at the intersection of product, customer success, and engineering, these three areas are key to proving its overall level of success. Below are some of the metrics you should look at when evaluating the impact of the introduction of a product ops team.
Product:
- Nombre de contrats remportés, trimestre après trimestre, avec l'influence de l'équipe produit
- Nombre d'heures économisées sur des tâches administratives ou opérationnelles
Engineering:
- Tendance en matière de résolution de bugs : le nombre de bugs a-t-il augmenté ou diminué depuis la création de la fonction product ops ?
- Release issues: how has the number of release problems and/or delays increased or decreased?
Customer success:
- Nombre de clients à risque conservés car l'équipe produit a été prévenue à temps
- Number of support tickets submitted and closed both pre- and post-product ops establishment
This is not an exhaustive list and every organization is different, so your mileage may vary. However, these numbers can provide a good jumping-off point and help you uncover areas that might require a deeper dive into the data. You might also discover opportunities to improve alignment between teams.
Qualitative metrics
While hard numbers are useful in proving the value of product ops to various stakeholders within the org, qualitative feedback is not to be ignored. However, we definitely recommend gathering it in a structured, measurable way. Qualitative measures of product ops success should focus on an essential aspect of the function: building strong interdepartmental relationships.
Christine Itwaru, director of product ops at Pendo, had the following to say about product ops team members: “People who have that ability to be trustworthy is really important because you’re dealing with three different customer sets — you have to be able to absorb their pain, but also articulate why or why not you’re doing something about it.”
While product ops’ activities affect multiple departments, the most critical to your business are likely the product and revenue teams. You’ll want to ask both groups to share their honest feedback on product ops’ impact. Below are a few questions you might pose to get the conversation started.
To your product organization:
- Pensez-vous que les équipes en contact avec les clients connaissent vos priorités et votre feuille de route actuelles ?
- Dans quelle mesure le product ops a-t-il été en mesure de fournir des données pour vous aider à influencer vos décisions ?
- Avez-vous une idée précise des besoins des équipes en contact avec la clientèle dans votre secteur de produits ?
Product ops teams serve as partners to PMs, helping them spent more time on customer outreach and strategic planning. Most likely, the product team will be able to quickly tell how effective (or ineffective) product ops has been in helping them reach their goals.
To your revenue teams:
- Depuis la mise en place de la fonction product ops, avez-vous le sentiment d'avoir une meilleure visibilité sur la feuille de route des produits et sur les sorties et lancements à venir ?
- Quand de nouvelles fonctionnalités sont mises sur le marché, comprenez-vous bien leurs fonctionnalités et la valeur qu'elles apportent aux clients ?
- Dans quelle mesure le product ops a-t-il répondu aux demandes d'assistance dans le cadre de contrats et/ou de renouvellement de comptes hautement prioritaires ?
The effectiveness of the product ops team can be measured on how well revenue teams feel selling new product features. In other words, what do the numbers reflect since product ops was introduced? Asking the revenue teams to characterize the product ops team’s influence can help provide a qualitative review. You might also consider establishing cross-functional goals that hold product ops and its counterparts (e.g. product management, customer success, sales) accountable for shared targets.
Want to learn more about how to build, manage, and evaluate your team’s product ops function? Read Pendo’s latest e-book, How to Set Up Product Ops in Your Organization, available for download here.
