There are a few common situations where teams realize they need to do this type of assessment. Frequently it's a team that's starting to grow rapidly and fall apart as a result. While smaller they could handle updates in a weekly team meeting, but then the team grew and the meeting got too long so now nobody knows where to go to figure out what's happening. Or they're starting to target enterprise customers who have a different need for transparency, so sales and account management need more information than they were getting previously, and go-to-market motions need to be smoother.

I'm constantly being asked what product ops really is. I boil it down to four key areas: using data, understanding users, team ownership, and cross-departmental communication. When I'm assessing the effectiveness of a product organization, I focus on these buckets. I wrote more about these four pillars 

This process usually takes me a week to get interviews in, a week to run the survey, another week of interviews to follow up on what I've learned, then a few days to synthesize.

When I'm hired as a consultant, I do the interviews myself because you often get much more candid answers when talking to an outsider. But if I were suggesting to someone to do this, I would recommend that a group of people do the interviews (not as mob interviews, but perhaps as 2:1s) so that the group responsible for implementing solutions can all have a sense of the user needs. It's really taking a product mindset to your own company.

Teams regularly forget to include their go-to-market teams, like sales, marketing, and customer support when conducting these assessments. Most people remember to get design and engineering included. Analytics is another one that can get overlooked.

I will alter the survey slightly from one client to the next, and perhaps expand a section if I know it's high-priority. But for the most part I keep the same survey. It also helps me with pattern-matching as I can notice whether a certain area is more in line with other companies or an outlier.

It's easy to look at some of these questions and say "but aren't these bigger issues with organizational culture, not a product ops issue?" I believe that 

product ops actually drives the broader culture

. Sometimes looking at those broader issues can help you find new insights into how product operations is or is not working. I usually take those questions as an opportunity to dig in further during interviews to see what I find out as opposed to using that survey data verbatim.

In this example, the team was just rolling out a Mixpanel implementation, and it was their first time with a true product analytics suite at the company.

When sorting the interview notes, I recommend sorting them by category instead of by person so you can see the patterns emerge from your interviews. It's a way to encourage synthesis of the data and equalize all the voices you hear from.

I wouldn't say there are "typical outcomes" of this type of assessment. It's always going to depend–what kind of culture are you trying to build, how are you trying to invest in your team. But generally there are going to be broad patterns around communication (making documentation more discoverable, adding consistency), analytics (adding in some governance and guidelines), and strategy and roadmapping (making it more clear what "the way" looks like at your company/setting expectations).

At the end of the assessment, the team conducts an ideation exercise, so there should be multiple solutions for each opportunity. Oftentimes, it helps to break the opportunity down into smaller components to ideate.

Jenny Wanger

See how I help organizations diagnose product ops challenges and determine where to focus their improvement efforts.

Improving data-driven decision making is worth investing in immediately because, when done right, it will achieve the following:

PMs who have a clearer sense of goals and long-term priorities, allowing them to figure out near-term strategy without as much support

Alignment between design, engineering, and product around business goals and metrics

Decisions based on facts instead of guesswork, increasing the success rate of product launches

Better utilization of product development team members' time as decision quality improves

Finding critical data earlier in the development cycle, shortening time between iterations or exploration of ideas

This assessment helps us figure out where things are working today and where we need to focus our time. It also creates a baseline so we can track our progress over time.

Product Operations Assessment and Template from Avenir Design

Product Ops Assessment

Why Conduct an Assessment?

Process Overview

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