Product Ops Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

This episode is a very special bonus one for Season 3. We chat to Melissa Perri and Denise Tilles about their highly anticipated and newly launched Product Ops book!
Melissa is the CEO of Produx Labs, a Product Management training organisation, and the author of “Escaping the Build Trap.” Denise has over a decade of product leadership experience and works as an independent product consultant advising and coaching product teams across the world.
In this episode, we find out more about:

- their Product Ops book

- the process of writing the book

- the top three product challenges organisations face

Listen in for some unique insights from the authors of Product Operations: How Successful Organisations ensure winning strategies and effectively scale.

And if YOU would like to be a guest on Season 4 of POP, please get in touch and subscribe at productopspod.com

For the final episode of Season 3 of POP, we’ll be listening to the brilliant, Teresa Torres! Teresa is a well known product discovery coach and the author of Continuous Discovery Habits, which has sold over 80k copies!

On this episode we discuss product challenges related to discovery such as:

1) access to customers

2) knowing which habit to do when

3) the importance of individual agency within organisations.

Listen in for some unique insights from a product discovery coach who is passionate about moving from theory to reality when it comes to implementing discovery habits at scale!

Resources mentioned:

• The Lean Startup - Eric Reis
• Continuous Discovery Habits - Teresa Torres
• Product Talk blog
• Teresa's Talk from Product at Heart Conference - Bringing Discovery Habits to Every Org

This season of POP is brought to you by BTRT ("beetroot"). Sign up to their private beta here.

For the first episode of Season 3 "Listening to our Customers" - we’ll be listening to Daniel Yubi. Daniel is currently the CEO and founder of Payable - a UK startup that is building treasury operations software for tech companies. Prior to starting his own company, Daniel worked in various senior product management roles at scaling fintechs such as Checkout.com and Curve. We discuss challenges around product alignment at scale, PM onboarding and managing product releases. Listen in for some unique insights from a product manager turned Founder/CEO!

Resources mentioned on the episode:

• Working Backwards (Amazon) - Colin Bryar and Bill Carr
• Amp it Up - Frank Slootman 

This season of POP is brought to you by BTRT ("beetroot"). Sign up to their private beta here.

For the last episode of Season 2 of POP, I’m thrilled to be joined by one of the pioneers of Product Ops in the industry, Blake Samic (Head of Product Ops @ Stripe), as well as two members of his fantastic product ops team at Stripe: Alexandra Lapinsky Wilson (Product Ops Manager) and Dan Barber (Product Ops Manager).

We find out how Stripe’s Product Ops team is set up for success! Building on the learnings Blake had from setting up Product Ops at Uber, we unpack how the team is organised between embedded product ops and more centralised product ops programs. Dan and Alexandra deep dive on why this structure works so well with some great practical examples including:
- the Stripe Terminal global launch and
- the Tops Asks from Users program.

Get ready for non stop insights into how one of the best product ops teams in the industry accelerates Stripe’s ability to deliver more value to more users!

Karen Gutierrez (Product Ops Lead) and Reema Joshi (Product Ops Specialist) from Wise join me for the sixth episode of Season 2 of POP. We find out what it’s like to manage and optimise Quarterly Planning at a global company with about 3000 employees in 17 offices across the world! We deep dive on the following challenges:
1. Quarterly Planning
2. Growing the team initially from 1 to 2
3. Product Ops "owning" products (Wise Mission Roadmap)

Listen in for some practical insights into how product ops is helping to improve transparency at a company wide and customer level while keeping a product mindset firmly in place!  

Christine Itwaru (Head of Product Ops), Rick Kadlac (Lead Product Ops Manager) and Adam Siegel (Manager, Technical Writing) from Pendo join me for the fifth episode of Season 2 of POP. We find out how Christine and her experienced team are creating company wide transparency around building, shipping and using products. We deep dive on the following challenges:
1. Focusing on the right things to tackle first
2. Establishing guardrails for your own product usage
3. Building trust in order to drive a collaborative knowledge base initiative

Listen in for some practical insights from a leading Product Ops team who "wrote the book" on Product Ops (The Rise of Product Ops)!

Anita Asiedu (Director of Operations) and Yande Nomvete (Senior Product Ops Analyst) from Chipper Cash join me for the fourth episode of Season 2 of POP. We find out what it’s like to grow a product ops team from 1 to many within a year and how the team needed to evolve against the backdrop of rapid scaling. We deep dive on the following challenges:
1. Evolving Responsibilities for the Product Ops team
2. Reducing waste in operations using internal tooling and keeping the user at the centre
3. Hiring externally: how do we find the right talent

Listen in for some practical insights into growing a product ops team and how product ops is helping to improve efficiency through internal tooling and keeping the user at the centre of everything!

Kam Dadfar (Director of Product Ops), Virginia Chiarentin (Product Ops Manager) and Charlotte Hayward (Product Ops Manager) from Onfido join me for the third episode of Season 2 of POP.  We find out how harnessing the power of data can unlock both process and product improvements in a fast growing scale-up and deep dive on the following challenges:
1. Using customer insights to improve a trial adoption process
2. Building on data insights to drive longer term product improvements
3. Scaling an NPS system
Listen in for some unique insights from a Product Ops team that sits under the Operations org and functions as a neutral party that ultimately puts customer interests first!

Tina Stewart (Head of Product Ops - Data&Growth Platform) and Shradha Kothari (Former Head of Product Ops - R&D) from Twilio join me for the second episode of Season 2 of POP. We discuss what it's like coming together to work as one Product Ops team under the Twilio umbrella post the Segment acquisition and deep dive on the following practical examples:
1. Scaling communication into and out of the R&D team
2. Simplifying operating cadences and recognizing the importance of change management
3. Scaling the Product Ops team with a clear sense of purpose from a career development perspective
Listen in for some unique insights into how Product Ops is structured in a large and fast-growing organisation to deliver maximum impact! 

Vincent Poulain (Senior Product Ops Lead) and Jessica Orellana (Senior Ops Lead) from Shopify join me for the first episode of Season 2 of POP. We deep dive on practical examples of how the Product Ops team is tackling alignment at scale, including:
1. With hypergrowth, how do we know what’s happening across the org and have the right decisions at the right time? 
2. How do we get hundreds of people across multiple teams to solve a hard problem instead of "shipping the org chart"
3. How do we scale Product Ops with a common foundation but different flavours e.g. Growth "startup" versus Core platform?
Listen in for some incredible insights into how Product Ops is enabling Shopify to operate with "the speed of startups and the impact of giants!"