What Does Product Operations Do? Guide (2025)

Product leaders often spend a lot of time clarifying priorities, building roadmaps and putting out fires. Eventually, that becomes unsustainable. That’s when the question of what product operations do matters. Product operations (or product ops) is an enablement function. It helps product and engineering teams do their best work by organising data, making processes repeatable and ensuring the right people have the right information at the right time. This article explains how product ops differs from product management, its responsibilities and why it matters.

What is product operations?

Product operations (often shortened to “ProdOps”) is the team or function that supports product managers by making sure the product development process runs smoothly. Think of it as the behind-the-scenes structure that keeps everything organized, efficient, and consistent.

The roots of product ops can be traced to sales and marketing operations teams. Those functions came into being when sales and marketing wanted dedicated support for tooling, data and processes. Product teams began to face similar challenges as organisations grew. Product managers (PMs) were bogged down in organising user research, pulling analytics and coordinating stakeholders instead of shaping product strategy. 

Product ops also came into being as the partner that takes on this operational load. According to LaunchNotes’ Product Ops Playbook, the most common definition of the role is “encouraging cross‑departmental collaboration and using product insights to identify improvement areas and inform important decisions”. The playbook’s more direct definition is that product ops enables product and engineering teams to do their best work, from the conception of a product to its final release.

In other words, what do product operations do? It looks at how people work today and finds ways to make those workflows smoother. It partners with PMs, engineers, designers and analysts to create an environment where collaboration flows and product thinking thrives. Unlike project management, product ops doesn’t dictate what to build or how to build it. The function supports those who make the decisions, ensuring they have clean data, clear processes and open communication.

Where it fits in the product lifecycle

Product ops is involved across the entire product lifecycle. During discovery, it helps set up user interviews and competitive analyses. When prioritising, it builds dashboards and collates insights so that PMs can make informed trade‑offs. During delivery, it coordinates cross‑team planning and ensures launch communications are timely. In growth, it channels feedback into the roadmap. It connects strategy and execution.

Main responsibilities of product operations

1) Data and performance analytics

One of the biggest ways product ops adds value is by turning messy usage data into actionable insights. The 2024 State of Product Management report from ProductPlan points out that 37% of companies now include product ops in their product organisations. The report states that product ops helps teams “organise data to aid decision making” and manage the tools used for analytics.

So what do product operations do in this area? It builds and maintains dashboards, pulls metrics from various sources and works with data analysts to ensure the numbers tell a clear story. By owning the data pipelines, product ops frees PMs to focus on interpreting insights rather than pulling spreadsheets. When market changes or experiments require new metrics, product ops can quickly adapt the reporting so that decision‑makers have timely feedback.

2) Roadmap planning and process optimisation

Good roadmaps aren’t just lists of features; they are commitments tied to strategy. PMs often struggle to update and communicate those plans because the day‑to‑day has so many distractions. Product ops steps in to manage roadmap rituals. Graham Reed, an advisor cited in LaunchNotes’ playbook, outlines six pillars of product ops: strategic support, business coherence, data‑informed decision‑making, product coherence, iterative improvement and cross‑functional collaboration. In practice, that means creating planning templates, keeping a single source of truth for the roadmap and regularly reviewing processes to see what needs improving. By owning these repeatable workflows, product ops increases consistency and reduces the overhead of planning. The result: PMs have more time for product discovery and strategy.

3) Stakeholder communication and cross‑functional collaboration

Product teams interface with engineering, design, marketing, sales and support. Without a system to manage communications, a lack of cohesion is inevitable. The LaunchNotes playbook emphasises that product ops must focus on building open, accessible lines of communication. It crafts workflows that connect the six pillars mentioned earlier by helping leaders write and share product strategy, creating digestible updates and facilitating cross‑team forums where decisions are made. In many companies, this bridge role reduces confusion and prevents duplicative efforts.

4) Market research and user experience enhancement

Product ops often run competitive analysis and customer feedback loops. The ProductPlan report observes that product ops facilitates user interviews and market research. A concrete example comes from Oscar Health, where product ops frees engineers and designers to focus on their strengths by handling the logistics of user interviews, competitive research and launch training. By taking on these operational tasks, the team saved dozens of hours and delivered better experiences for users.

5) Tooling and infrastructure

As companies grow, tooling sprawl becomes a hidden cost. ProductPlan’s 2024 survey found that nearly half of respondents cited standardising tools and reducing data silos as a major driver for consolidating their product tool stack. Product ops manages this consolidation. It chooses the right platforms for roadmapping, collaboration and prototyping, and it maintains them so that everyone is using the same systems. When new tools (like machine-assisted analytics) enter the market, product ops evaluate and implement them in a way that fits existing workflows.

The value of product operations for startups

Early‑stage teams often ask, what do product operations do that they can’t manage themselves? Initially, you might not need a dedicated person. But as LaunchNotes observes, once you reach around 150 staff members or 5–6 PMs, gaps in communication and process become significant. The role matters because it:

• Frees PMs to focus on vision by taking on research, reporting and coordination—Oscar’s team, for example, saved about 100 engineering hours on a single integration.
  
  
• Scales knowledge and practices by standardising how teams work and keeping documentation current so that insights move across squads.
  
  
• Prevents bottlenecks and delays by continuously evaluating workflows and improving them before small issues become expensive problems.

Product operations vs product management

Skills and tools of product operations

A good product ops practitioner draws on a mix of analytical, organisational and people skills:

• Analytical strength — comfort with SQL and visualisation tools, plus basic statistical thinking. Cleaning and connecting data sets forms much of the job.
  
  
• Process discipline — designing and refining workflows, documenting best practices and understanding methodologies like Agile and Kanban. Familiarity with tools such as Jira or Notion helps.
  
  
• Communication & coordination — writing clear updates, facilitating meetings and bridging teams, so that information flows at the right time.
  
  
• Customer empathy & change management — synthesising feedback from research, training teams on new practices and persuading colleagues to adopt tools or processes.

Examples of product operations in action

Many technology and consumer brands illustrate how product ops adds value. At Uber, each product manager is paired with an operations partner who gathers local market insights, coordinates experiments and ensures that the roadmap reflects regulatory realities in hundreds of cities. 

Stripe’s team uses product ops to strengthen feedback loops between customer support, sales and engineering; they monitor adoption metrics and share insights so that PMs spot opportunities quickly. 

In the retail world, product operations leads at companies such as Lululemon design repeatable workflows across e‑commerce, store operations and supply chain, maintaining inventory accuracy and training teams to work autonomously. 

At Oscar Health, product ops acts like a Swiss‑Army knife—writing queries, managing launch processes and creating checklists so that specialists can spend more time on high‑value work. The Oscar team reports freeing roughly 100 engineering hours through an integration project, which translated into more code shipped without increasing headcount.

Why founders and PMs should care

If you’re leading a startup or heading a product team, you might ask, what does product operations do for you personally. Here’s why it matters:

• Make room for strategy. Founders and PMs often feel their days disappear into coordination and reporting. Handing those responsibilities to product ops lets you focus on vision, user discovery and competitive strategy.
  
  
• Build a system before chaos sets in. The medium essay emphasises that organisations often wait too long to introduce product ops. If you’re near 150 staff members or juggling multiple squads, start embedding product ops principles now. You’ll avoid break‑downs when growth accelerates.
  
  
• Enhance cross‑functional trust. Product ops doesn’t shield teams from each other; it strengthens their collaboration by ensuring information flows at the right times. That trust reduces rework and increases morale.
  
  
• Improve decision quality. By owning data pipelines and analysis, product ops raises the standard of evidence used in prioritisation. Better decisions save money and accelerate learning.

Conclusion

Product ops isn’t an optional extra; it’s the backbone that helps product teams scale gracefully. It brings order to data, processes and communication so that PMs can focus on the highest‑impact work. The 2024 State of Product Management report found that over a third of companies already have a product ops function and that it helps with user research, market studies, data organisation and tooling. LaunchNotes’ playbook reminds us that product ops is an enablement role—its purpose is to help product and engineering teams do their best work.

At Parallel, we’ve seen that a dedicated product ops function keeps teams lean and strategic. If you’re still wondering what product operations do, think of it as the invisible engine that keeps your product machine running smoothly.

I hope this clarifies how product ops supports your team today.

FAQs

1) What does product operations do and what is the job description?

The role involves gathering and analysing product data, running competitive analysis and user research, coordinating cross‑team communication, designing repeatable workflows and maintaining the tools that product teams use.

2) Is product operations a good role?

Yes, demand for the role is growing. According to Comparably, a product operations specialist in the United States earns an average salary of about $60,886 with a range from $28,151 to $263,799. At more senior tiers, compensation increases and there are opportunities to move into product leadership. The role also gives exposure to strategy, analytics and stakeholder management.

3) What does a product operations lead do at Lululemon?

They coordinate processes across e‑commerce, stores and supply chain. That includes maintaining tools, ensuring inventory accuracy, facilitating launch communication and scaling workflows. A good lead also trains teams so that practices remain consistent as the company grows.

4) What do production operations do?

“Production operations” typically refers to manufacturing or logistics. It focuses on producing physical goods, managing factories, inventory and supply chains. Product operations apply to software and technology teams; its work is about enabling product and engineering teams to build software products efficiently and with clear communication.