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Understanding the role of product ops | Christine Itwaru (Pendo)

Christine Itwaru is a longtime product operations leader at Pendo and more recently has taken on the larger role of Principal Strategist there. Before leading product ops, Christine spent 12 years in product management. In this episode, we delve into the rapidly growing field of product ops and discover how Christine is part of shaping the role industry-wide. She helps us define the role of product operations, what kind of person would be a good fit for the product ops role, when your company would benefit from product ops, and what red flags to look for if you decide to go down this path. — Brought to you by Amplitude—Build better products: https://amplitude.com/ | Lenny’s Job Board—Hire the best product people. Find the best product gigs: https://www.lennysjobs.com/talent | Vanta—Automate compliance. Simplify security: https://vanta.com/lenny Find the full transcript here: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/understanding-the-role-of-product-ops-christine-itwaru-pendo/#transcript Where to find Christine Itwaru: • Twitter: https://twitter.com/christineitwaru • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christineitwaru/ • Website: https://theproductheart.com/ Where to find Lenny: • Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com • Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennysan • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/ Referenced: • Ben Williams on Lenny’s Podcast: https://www.podpage.com/lennys-podcast/how-snyk-built-a-product-led-growth-juggernaut-ben-williams-vp-of-product-at-snyk/ • Pendo: https://go.pendo.io/ • Marty Cagan on Lenny’s Podcast: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/the-nature-of-product-marty-cagan-silicon-valley-product-group/ • Salesforce: https://www.salesforce.com/ • Looker: https://www.looker.com/ • Tray: https://tray.io/ • Zapier: https://zapier.com/ • Zendesk: https://www.zendesk.com/ • Casey Winters on Lenny’s Podcast: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/how-to-sell-your-ideas-and-rise-within-your-company-casey-winters-eventbrite/ • Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love: https://www.amazon.com/INSPIRED-Create-Tech-Products-Customers/dp/1119387507/ • Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t: https://www.amazon.com/Leaders-Eat-Last-Together-Others/dp/1591848016/ • The Product-Led Organization: Drive Growth by Putting Product at the Center of Your Customer Experience: https://www.amazon.com/Product-Led-Organization-Putting-Customer-Experience/dp/1119660874 • Product Roadmaps Relaunched: How to Set Direction while Embracing Uncertainty: https://www.amazon.com/Product-Roadmaps-Relaunched-Direction-Uncertainty/dp/149197172X/ • The Product Experience podcast: https://www.mindtheproduct.com/the-product-experience/ • Matilda the Musical: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3447590/ • Rise on Disney+: https://www.disneyplus.com/movies/rise/6Yv1uRnw2uAJ • Miro: https://miro.com/ • Figma: https://www.figma.com/ • Seismic: https://seismic.com/ • Gong: https://www.gong.io/ In this episode, we cover: (00:00) Christine’s background (02:34) How working with Ben Williams led Christine to Lenny’s Podcast (05:02) The role of product ops in product management (07:31) How 2019 became “the summer of product ops” (11:19) The different ways product ops can assist product teams (15:50) How Pendo used product ops to bring teams together and share data (18:15) Where user research fits in (22:39) How product ops are being utilized—and not exclusively in B2B companies (24:47) How to convince a product leader that you need product ops (27:41) Why customer experience is the core of a PM’s role (29:47) Who is doing the work of the product ops person before that role is created (31:37) Christine’s response to Casey Winters’s take on ops teams (37:40) Signs your company could benefit from a product ops team (30:56) How a lack of transparency led to Pendo adding product ops (46:11) The line between product ops and product marketing (47:30) Who might be a good fit for a product ops role (53:39) Red flags for product ops roles (that apply to any role) (54:08) How product teams are structured at Pendo (57:18) Lightning round Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.

Christine ItwaruguestLenny Rachitskyhost
Feb 15, 20231h 6mWatch on YouTube ↗

At a glance

WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT

Why Product Ops Matters: Clarifying, Scaling, And Empowering Product Teams

  1. Lenny chats with Christine Itwaru, longtime product ops leader at Pendo and former product manager, to demystify what product operations is and why it’s become so prominent.
  2. Christine frames product ops both as a system you create and as a role: a partner to PMs and a strategic advisor to product leadership that removes friction, improves alignment, and amplifies customer insight.
  3. They walk through concrete responsibilities of product ops—voice of customer, tooling, content/education, process, and cross‑functional transparency—plus when a company should consider investing in the function.
  4. The conversation also tackles spicy questions: whether ops roles signal inefficiency, how to convince skeptical PMs and leaders, what product ops should never take away from PMs, and who’s best suited for a career in product ops.

IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING

5 ideas

Treat product ops as both a system and a role.

Product operations isn’t just a job title; it’s the underlying system that lets product teams thrive, plus (in many orgs) a dedicated person or team that designs, runs, and continually improves that system.

Free PMs’ time to focus on customers and engineers.

Product ops should deliberately take on work like internal alignment, data synthesis, and stakeholder communication so PMs can spend more time understanding customer pain and partnering deeply with engineering—work they should never give up.

Centralize and synthesize the voice of the customer.

A strong product ops function aggregates qualitative and quantitative inputs from sales, success, support, NPS, and product usage, makes sense of them with research, and feeds actionable insights to PMs and stakeholders instead of raw noise.

Use ops to drive transparency and readiness across the company.

Product ops boosts internal trust by making roadmaps, decisions, and outcomes clearer—for example, through recurring product digests and structured launch/readiness processes that help go-to-market teams know what’s coming and what to do with it.

Start with processes and systems—but plan to automate and move upmarket.

In earlier-stage orgs, product ops often begins with planning and process hygiene; over time, the mandate should shift toward automation, tooling, and more strategic advisory work, rather than permanently owning basic coordination tasks.

WORDS WORTH SAVING

5 quotes

Product operations is a thing you do, and it’s also the person or people who design that system so product teams can thrive.

— Christine Itwaru

Speaking as a former PM, I would not ever give up spending time with customers and watching their pain.

— Christine Itwaru

If your PMs are constantly fielding questions from your revenue team when they could be spending time with customers, you have a problem product ops can solve.

— Christine Itwaru

Ops alignment across companies is what often ends up keeping the companies moving and keeping everybody aligned.

— Christine Itwaru

Get into this role if you’re comfortable letting go of things and moving on to something that is well worth your time.

— Christine Itwaru

Definition and evolution of product operations as both a system and a roleCore responsibilities of product ops (voice of customer, tooling, content, process)When and why companies should create a product ops functionRelationship and boundaries between product ops, product management, product marketing, and program/agile rolesWhether operations roles are a sign of organizational inefficiencyCareer paths into product ops and who is a good fit for the roleHow Pendo structures its product and product ops organizations in practice

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