Lenny's PodcastUnderstanding the role of product ops | Christine Itwaru (Pendo)
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
140 min read · 27,881 words- 0:00 – 2:34
Christine’s background
- CIChristine Itwaru
Speaking as a former PM, I would not ever give up spending time with customers and watching their pain. The- that's how I fell in love with product was, I saw my internal customer, 12 years back now, fighting with the keyboard, fighting with the mouse. And I was just like, "Oh my gosh, what is this guy doing?" (laughs)
- LRLenny Rachitsky
(instrumental music) Welcome to Lenny's Podcast, where I interview world-class product leaders and growth experts to learn from their hard-won experiences building and growing today's most successful products. Today, my guest is Christine Etwaru. Christine is a longtime product ops leader at Pendo, a role that she transitioned into from product management. I've been hearing more and more about the rise of product ops, and I've never really understood what the role was, until I had this conversation with Christine. We dig into what product ops people do day-to-day, where the line is between their role in product management, whether you should consider getting into the role, whether your company would benefit from product ops. We also have an interesting discussion around whether ops roles in general are a sign of inefficiency at your company. I learned a ton from this conversation, and Christine is awesome. And so with that, I bring you Christine Etwaru after a short word from our wonderful sponsors. This episode is brought to you by Amplitude. If you're setting up your analytics stack, but not using Amplitude, what are you doing? Anyone can sell you analytics, while Amplitude unlocks the power of your product and guides you every step of the way. Get the right data, ask the right questions, get the right answers, and make growth happen. To get started with Amplitude for free, visit amplitude.com. Amplitude, power to your products. Are you hiring? Or on the flip side, are you looking for a new opportunity? Well, either way, check out lennysjobs.com/talent. If you're a hiring manager, you can sign up and get access to hundreds of hand-curated people who are open to new opportunities. Thousands of people apply to join this collective, and I personally review and accept just about 10% of them. You won't find a better place to hire product managers and growth leaders. Join almost 100 other companies who are actively hiring through this collective. And if you're looking around for a new opportunity, actively or passively, join the collective. It's free, you can be anonymous, and you can even hide yourself from specific companies. You could also leave any time, and you'll only hear from companies that you want to hear from. Check out lennysjobs.com/talent.
- 2:34 – 5:02
How working with Ben Williams led Christine to Lenny’s Podcast
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Christine, welcome to the podcast.
- CIChristine Itwaru
Thank you. I'm so happy to be here, Lenny.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
First of all, I just wanted to give a big thank you to Ben Williams, who was a previous guest on this podcast, who suggested you join this podcast and who connected us. And we were chatting earlier, and you said you have a story about Ben. And so what is that?
- CIChristine Itwaru
I do. Absolute thanks to Ben for connecting us. So w- when he made the intro, I was super excited. One, 'cause it's you, and two, because I love hearing from Ben, and I was like, "Oh, great, like, he's doing all these wonderful things and whatnot." And I just remember in that moment, my first conversation with Ben, which was really early in the days of starting product operations at Pendo. And we were going through all these just really crazy things that he was going through, and his team was a customer of Pendo at the time. And he's like sitting there just kind of staring, and just, I was like, "Oh, are you okay?" And he's like, "Yeah, I'm fine." I thought, I thought that I was just throwing him off at every turn. He said to me, "You know, I bet you I'm not the only person who has these questions. And I bet you I'm not the only person that's thinking about all these problems that probably seem very normal and natural." I mean, I don't, I don't know if ... You know, I bet all of us are going through it. This is why I'm building product ops here. But when he said it, he was just like, "I really think there are a lot more people that you need to talk to about this stuff." So ... And I was just so, you know. It's just kind of full circle, right? I think he connected us and, and, and he was one of the reasons I started to say one of the best things that my, my first boss in product always told me was, "You have to find a way to give back." And when he said that to me, I was like, "I wonder if this is one of the ways that I can start to give back to the product community," so.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Awesome. Well, here we are.
- CIChristine Itwaru
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
And obviously we're gonna be talking about product ops.
- CIChristine Itwaru
Mm-hmm.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
You've been in the product ops role for seemingly it feels like as long as the role has existed. I'd love to know when you think the role actually, and we're gonna talk about just, like, when this kind of spurt happened in product ops. And I hate this term, but it feels like you're kind of a thought leader in the product ops space. I've never actually worked with anyone in product ops. I've never had a product ops team, and so I have a ton of questions. I imagine many people listening also haven't and are also just curious about this emerging role. And so what I'm hoping we do with our chat is to help people understand, do they need a product ops team? Would that be beneficial to their company? Whether people should may consider moving into product ops, whether they're in PM or something else right now, and then just generally help people understand this emerging role of product ops. Does that sound good?
- CIChristine Itwaru
Yes. Thank you, number one. That was really kind. And two, yes.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Oh, yeah.
- CIChristine Itwaru
I'm happy to dive in. Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Okay, sweet.
- 5:02 – 7:31
The role of product ops in product management
- LRLenny Rachitsky
(laughs) So I think we have to start with the basics. What's just, like, the simplest way to understand the role of product ops and especially in relation to product management?
- CIChristine Itwaru
I've had many ways of describing this in the past, and it generally centered around the latter of what I'm gonna tell you, or the second part of this. But I'm breaking it down now into two, into two simple things. One is, it is a thing you do. Product operations for a VP or a head of product or a product manager is the creation of some sort of system that allows you to thrive or allows your team to thrive in product management. And the second is what we've seen more of over the last couple years, and it's the more common definition. It's the emergence of the role itself is why it's so common. It's a person or the people, the group of individuals, who are strong partners to the product manager. And then for more mature product ops teams, end up people being more strategic advisors to the head of product, so your CPO or your VP again, when it comes to data, qualitative, quantitative, anything that they feel can help...... The CPO or the head of product make more strategic decisions, and more informed decisions.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Got it. It feels like there's been this big inflection and emergence of the role in the past couple years, past few years. I'm curious what you think triggered that, and if that's true, if it feels like it's just kind of emerged in the last couple years. And yeah, and then just like why do you think that has happened?
- CIChristine Itwaru
This is interesting, 'cause like, as a former product manager and product leader, I don't think that things are new. Absolutely. And that's what, when I go back to the story about Ben, it's like, it, it, I'm like, "No, like none of this stuff feels really interesting and I," you know, it's just stuff that we have to deal with in product. And so, the problems have always been there. I think maybe that is because I have a product background, and so I felt that pain very acutely. But I will say for the majority of people who I speak to who don't have that product background, they're coming from consulting, or from technical success, or from some other group marketing maybe. Yeah, it does feel relatively new, because they're starting to dive into that space a little bit. But, I will say that for me in particular at Pendo, it was the summer of 2019 that this really picked up, and I remember a colleague of mine, shout out to Shannon, he's no longer with us, but he was one of the original people on the Pendo product team. He said, "You know what I think? This is the summer, the birth of product ops."
- LRLenny Rachitsky
(laughs)
- CIChristine Itwaru
And I just started laughing, and, and, and he was like, "I'm telling you, it's everywhere. All of a sudden everybody's just
- 7:31 – 11:19
How 2019 became “the summer of product ops”
- CIChristine Itwaru
like, 'We need something. We need to ve- make product better.'" And I thought that was awesome, because we had already started talking about it, right? And so it took me a bit to understand what was going on across tech that was making this thing so big. And I'm very grateful, because we have so many great customers that reach out and say, "Help us understand how you're doing this." And, and I'm like, "Well, help me understand what, what's going on." And so for me, it went beyond the problems that we would solve as a product team with the Pendo product. It went into, "How can we help you as an organization solve pain that you're feeling within your product team that trickles out ultimately into the business," right?
- LRLenny Rachitsky
That's interesting, though, the summer of product ops. What happened there? Why, why was there a summer of product ops? Why was everyone starting to get excited and kind of creating product ops teams?
- CIChristine Itwaru
Yeah, I'll dive in, and it's like the customers, customers started to come up, and we started to feel it a bit more, and I felt like there was this huge need for voice of customer management, and an, and synthesis of both this qualitative and quantitative data as a theme that I saw arising across our customer base, or even just folks that were reaching out about this role as they saw Pendo was putting it down. There was a lot of pain around internal alignment and general transparency to stakeholders, uh, up, across your revenue team members. And then, for a lot of people during this time, growth was a massive propeller of the need for product ops. I remember just sitting here in this office and getting these random, every industry almost was like, "Oh, yeah, I'm thinking about doing this, and I really need to do this, pandemic," blah, blah, blah. So there was growth during the pandemic, especially within industries such as home furnishings and making, making their living space a whole lot better. All of a sudden, we started to see that rise. But we're all experiencing this massive amount of growth across some of these startups and, and really rapidly growing companies, and it, and we're also moving more towards these product-led tactics, uh, product-led growth. And all of these things I feel like f- made this perfect storm for product operations to come in and sort of start calming things down. I personally believe there's this natural evolution that happens in any mature function when it starts to grow in an industry and, and across an organization. So, think about marketing or sales, right? Th- this just started to happen with product managers and, for me, I was sitting there going, "Well, you can appoint a PM to liaise with other ops teams in the business, but at what risk?" Right? Their product portfolio, the growth and adoption of their product, all these goals that they have to hit today in order to build a better tomorrow for their customers. And so, I felt like that was the moment to say, "Okay, how do we give them the structure that they need to thrive," right? Because the CPO is in charge of so much more than product people have historically been in charge of. Right? Like I'll probably talk about Marty Cagan several times here, and I really do admire and respect him. I think one of the things that he always talks about is future teams versus, you know, high performing teams and, and focusing on outcomes. And CPOs went from, "Okay, deliver, deliver, deliver," to really increase business metrics, or, you know, just help drive the bottom line versus just really look at the product. And you really have to figure out what that means for the product team at large.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Got it. So the way to think about this role, 'cause I imagine most people haven't ever had a product ops person on their, in their company, is there's kind of like a slice of the PM role that companies are finding is valuable to put on a different person that has different skillsets-
- CIChristine Itwaru
Mm-hmm.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... that can take this, like, endless load that PMs have. Like, PMs have so many things to do, and their job is so full of, uh, (laughs) responsibilities.
- CIChristine Itwaru
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
That there's this sliver of stuff that a product ops person can take off. I- I'd be curious too, and, uh, feel free to comment on that, but I'm also curious, you mentioned a few specific things that the product ops folks
- 11:19 – 15:50
The different ways product ops can assist product teams
- LRLenny Rachitsky
do. It'd be cool to just, like, go through a bullet list of just those sorts of things, like you said, kind of responsible for voice of the customer-
- CIChristine Itwaru
Right.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... pieces, alignment across stakeholders, whatever. Like if you could just go through some of those, that'd be ... That makes it really concrete, I think, for people to understand how, "Wow, this person, I could have someone do all these for me." That'd be amazing.
- CIChristine Itwaru
Mm-hmm. In some ways I've got this question a lot from product managers who are concerned about the rise of this role, or product leaders who are concerned that it was gonna create some sort of controversy or friction between product ops people and product managers, and the way I coach people to get around that is really, what are your people responsible for? What are you holding them accountable to? Are you holding the product manager accountable to elevating these strategic insights so that they are going to elevate it to everyone else, and then everyone else is gonna go out there and build the thing and, you know, drive the value? Or are you holding them accountable to truly understanding the customer in, in whatever way possible?... especially going out and talking to the customer. Please, don't ever, anybody, ever take that for granted. Um, and really spending time with their engineers and the customers in order to drive a better experience, right? And so if they've got to spend all this time, which is our most valuable asset, with those two entities, everything else still has to get there. And so, I think that, yes, there was a point of friction, but I feel like now it's, it's been a nice change where I'm seeing people in product say, "No, I wanna do product ops now," who, who was a former product member. And the second part of that, you said let's go through the list of, of tactical things. And yes, voice of customer management is definitely one of the things that we're seeing more. I would say... I, I don't wanna say mature, 'cause then it, I feel like I'm saying- Mm-hmm. ... mature up your, your peak. But the ones who have matured a bit, I feel like they are focusing more on the voice of customer element. So, quantitative analysis, qualitative, bringing all of these different inputs that would traditionally be handled by the product manager, through, you know, looking across the aisle at their PMM or looking at different data sources, to the surface when they're going through their product development lifecycle planning. And really figuring out too what that balance is. I think there's an art. You can do voice of customer in two ways. You can do it, one, in, like, this process way, where you're feeding it to a really mature, longstanding product team who has this mature product. Or you have this voice of customer thing that you have to do for, for teams that are actually building something new, and they're really trying to move fast. So, how do you really get them what they need in order to experiment and iterate on the next thing that they're doing? So, that's one aspect. Another one is tooling. We see this more for folks who don't yet have tools under control in their product org. And I'm not saying everybody has this, right? Uh, we, we had someone at one point handle whatever tools connected to Pendo, and make sure that those systems are set up for maximum outcomes for the product manager. And so, as Pendo's connected to Salesforce, we're connected to Looker, we're connected to all these... Tray, all these different, you know. And so, what does the product manager need to achieve out of all those things, that ultimately drives our experience for Pendo ourselves? We get very meta here. That person was responsible for that, and that's all also a part of the data component. The other things that we're seeing are more along the lines of content strategy, and being really intentional about making content and education a part of the product process, right, and the delivery process. So, taking a look at how they maximize the outcomes from the outcome that the product manager is driving, so that they can help increase retention, growth, and all of that good stuff for the product. So, those are some of the things that we're seeing. And then there's also this component that happens, or this piece of it that happens in the beginning when you're starting your product ops for a product team that does not have much process in, and that's the process piece. And that's the bit that's a bit controversial, because folks who are like, "Is this just program management? Is this just a different flavor of Agile?" And so, what we're seeing is this, you know, what are these folks doing? Are they managing and facilitating the product development lifecycle? Are they, um, doing things with the rest of the organization? So, I feel like this one's a little bit up in the air. Some are actually Agile facilitators as well. Mm-hmm. But I am seeing emergence of some companies that have the program management, uh, team under the product ops umbrella, to help with this massive amount of things that they have to manage across the board. Oh, that's a really interesting point
- 15:50 – 18:15
How Pendo used product ops to bring teams together and share data
- CIChristine Itwaru
on the last piece. I wanna dig in on that a little bit. Uh, just to summarize what you shared, so some of the kinda key roles of a product ops person, there's this voice of customer element, and just so I understand what you mean by that, are... The team is aggregating feedback from customers and feedback from customer support and sales and things like that, and, like, sharing it with the product manager to give them clear conclusions and, like, takeaways so that the PM doesn't have to sit there and filter their all state? Is that, is that a way to think about it? That's one part of it. We actually- Mm-hmm. ... developed this really cool way of doing it here at Pendo, which is, the transparency is a word that we love here. And what we found, that there was just not this need for the revenue org to be transparent and say, "Hey, this is what we're hearing, and product people, please listen." Or vice versa, like, "Here's what we're doing for your customer." There was this interesting moment where we realized that our sales team was screaming for something, and our success team was screaming for something else, but our TAMs were looking at something else, right? And so, they're all wonderful, relevant things that our customers wanted, but we were like, "I wonder if they're aware that, like, they've got all these amazing things, and they're kind of, you know, talking, they're talking about it separately." And our PMs, they would get the whole readout, you know, with us. But we brought those folks in a room together, and it was really cool, because it was like, I think our head of our professional services team at one point was like, "Whoa, like this can truly impact what we do from an onboarding perspective. Now we have this data, and then how do we then strengthen this area in the product?" So, it wasn't just about the components. So, I don't know if other companies are doing it like that, but I was very proud of the way we ended up doing that here. But the PM, yes, got risk data, high-priority deals, feedback from our feedback product. What are we hearing from prospects versus paying customers? What segments are saying what? All that stuff got fed over to the PM, and then validated through our research team, or disputed through our research team, which was really cool. So it's a really good partnership with our research team. But on the other side, what was really nice too was, we were able to educate our revenue team on behalf of the product team and say, "You know, guys, like not everything requires a product change. So, if you're saying there's customers that have friction around this one area of this product, maybe it's enabling. Maybe it's something that we need to help you guys understand a little bit better, so that you can make their experience better. Or, maybe we need to update our documentation." (laughs) It's just very simple things like that that just ended up coming of this voice of customer process.
- 18:15 – 22:39
Where user research fits in
- CIChristine Itwaru
So essentially, it's just finding ways to make the PM more focused, and allow them to focus on the things they wanna focus on- Correct. ... and reduce workload-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
On the user research piece, I'm curious. So it feels like there's a lot of... There's user research coming in. PMs are involved in user research. There's a research team. Where does the product ops team fit in there? Or is it focused on, like, internal alignment stakeholder feedback more versus, like, external customer feedback?
- CIChristine Itwaru
Yeah. And, uh, you know, again, I'll say this probably several times, 'cause every company is doing it, it in their own little bit of flavor.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah.
- CIChristine Itwaru
I'll tell you that here and from a couple of companies that I'm seeing out- outside of Pendo, our user research team sits with our UX team. They report into our head of UX, and they are responsible for proactive research and making sure that we are, uh, aligning to our strategy, right, and saying, "Okay, here's, here's what our folks are saying. Here's why we're going after this market or this new thing that we're doing. Let's start going out there and validating or checking with some of these key personas, right, and what, what we need to do." And then they are also a part of the ongoing development process or product development process, so, you know, testing stuff out, making sure that they're doing user interviews and all that good stuff. So they sit as a partner to us. We work very closely together. And again, I'll give you that example of voice of customer, which is we have all of this input coming in from our customer success or post-sales teams, and we know we're about to invest in our guides area of the product. We have all of this. What do we do with it? Well, we couple that with... I'm personally responsible for NPS, or I was for a very long time. I'm seeing a lot of noise around guides. So I take all of that, and we pull it all together, and we give it to our head of research and say, "All right, let's all make sense of all this together," right? Is this something that is in line with the direction that the product team is going, the guides team? Or is this something that we're gonna need to dig a little bit more into to see if their efforts right now, where they're growing, are not where they should be growing?
- LRLenny Rachitsky
The other two bullet points, just to kind of make sure I totally understand, uh, you help with tooling. The product ops team helps just, like-
- CIChristine Itwaru
Mm-hmm.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... optimize the tooling to build product, right? Is that a-
- CIChristine Itwaru
Mm-hmm.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... simple way to think about it? Just make sure the product development process is efficient?
- CIChristine Itwaru
Yeah, we partner with the program management team and the tools that they use for product development stuff. I would say it's more, what are the things that the product manager needs in order to be successful? And so we look at Pendo, right? Uh, we, we do use our own product, like I mentioned, quite a lot. Salesforce is another thing. So how does that all plug into our own product, and what data are we looking to get out of there so our PMs have a complete picture in Pendo? Tray is another one I mentioned. Zapier was another one that we had used. So it's more about the PM's tool sack versus the PM's planning tool sack, if you want to draw that distinction.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Got it.
- CIChristine Itwaru
Mm-hmm.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Okay, that is helpful. And then content strategy, by that you mean internal documentation to train sales and customer support? Or is there also, like, help the product team build out product marketing content and things like that?
- CIChristine Itwaru
Ooh, neither. Or a bit, I guess. I guess what we have done is fed into both of those. Technical documentation, technical... Like, we use Zendesk as another tool, right? So we use Zendesk as another part of our tool stack to support our customers. And so a brand new feature comes out. Natural thing to do, let's write up this thing in Zendesk. But it's also about how we weave education into the product, and we use Pendo again. Let me Sorry. I'm, I'm not really sorry.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
(laughs)
- CIChristine Itwaru
It's actually a really good tool.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
(laughs)
- CIChristine Itwaru
So we do, we do use Pendo guides, and we just released... Let's just say we just released our NPS theme. So a pain in my team's butt has been manual labor around NPS themes and qualitative data. And so we designed this experience for customers who are in this beta so that they can, in the product, understand what it is. And then if they really need more, they can go out to the technical documentation. But it's about the education for the customer. And I mentioned earlier treating content is a part of the development life cycle process. You really want to treat it as a part of definition of done, right? And so that team's responsible for all of that. When you think about product-led growth and the emergence of that in particular over the last couple years, it's all about creating that experience in-app that keeps people in and that helps them upgrade, right? And so they work alongside product marketing to develop these playbooks for what they're doing in-app to create less friction and drive more engagement.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Got it.
- CIChristine Itwaru
Mm-hmm.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Okay, that makes a lot more sense.
- 22:39 – 24:47
How product ops are being utilized—and not exclusively in B2B companies
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Would it be safe to say that product ops is essentially for B2B companies, where there's all these internal stakeholders, sales, customer support, marketing, things like that, and there, that's the kind of work that you could take off the product manager's plate?
- CIChristine Itwaru
My personal experience, and I think a lot of people would agree with me, has led me to believe that's not accurate. It's emerged a lot more in B2B, or I think, I think we've seen it a lot more in B2B, or at least people talking about it. And, and I'm curious as to why, and I wonder if it's because we're sharing 'cause we're all trying to go through this thing together, serving each other. And then the other is serving the customer, so it's not like, "Hey, help me figure this thing out." I actually... Like, I was so lucky. I still am so lucky to work with so many people in my network, in our customer base to help them understand the rule or determine whether they even needed this thing or not. Without calling out names, there are some really big companies in retail and finance and some industries that you would not expect who are B2C, larger, well-established companies who we all know and love and, and maybe not, maybe not even love. Maybe the experience is bad for us, right? So they, they, they also do have a lot more cross-functional engagement internally than we can... We would even think of. So I don't know if it's 'cause, you know, we're used to this world, and we haven't thought about that side of it. But it's really interesting. They ha- It's... I think the common thread is the cross-functional transparency, and then transparency out to the customer. And so I mentioned transparency. It's a big word for us, but readiness is another one, right? And so readiness means a lot. You have tier teams you need to get ready internally. We really need to get customers ready for something new as well, and everybody needs to feel aligned. So it plays a massive part in what the product manager and the product team needs to consider, advocate for, deliver, and communicate about, I feel like no matter the size or industry.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
I imagine a lot of PMs listening to this have this kind of, like, two-minded view right now, of like, on the one hand, "Somebody could take all this work off my plate, that's awesome."
- CIChristine Itwaru
Mm-hmm.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
On the other, it's like, "Oh, okay, there's another stakeholder I have to loop into every meeting, and they're gonna be doing this work that's kind of cool and important, that ma- I'm not gonna get to do any more, and that's weird."
- 24:47 – 27:41
How to convince a product leader that you need product ops
- LRLenny Rachitsky
What have you found is the best way to convince a PM toThis is like, "Wow, this would make your life so much better, and this is really ???".
- CIChristine Itwaru
Yeah. I go back to that, that question that I have asked leaders when helping them stand this up, which is, "What are you looking at your PMs to drive, and how are you measuring their success?" And that generally just helps everybody get in, get on the same page really quickly. I've had customers, or I've had folks come to me in, in the product community that say, "I've tried this, and it's just not going anywhere." You know, there's resistance to the role, because they feel like it's stepping on too many toes and whatnot. And generally, generally, I will tell you, it's because they still have a bit of buy-in in the top to get done. And I'm seeing that the most successful ones that are drawing the lines and showing that this role is valuable are the people that have their buy-in from their CEO, CPO, at that level, or their head of product in saying, "Hey, this is what this role means for you." So I don't want to say it's, it needs to be directive. I do want to say that you need to be able to articulate the value to a, uh, somebody who's heading up es- essentially businesses, right, and saying, "Here's what this role is gonna drive for you at the end of the day." The, you know, very mature product ops orgs end up having people that are strategic advisors to a product leader. And so, once you can show that this is what you'll also get as a result of me and this other person, or me and this team doing this, it ends up being an easier conversation.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
What are like, like a couple bullet points that are most effective to convince a product leader, product ops is gonna make a big impact and benefit you? And then just like an IC PM, who's like, "I don't want this person on my team." Like, what actually works there to get buy-in?
- CIChristine Itwaru
Yeah. Number one, do you want your PMs to constantly be fielding questions from your revenue team when they could be spending time with customers? Yeah, you're shaking your head.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Right.
- CIChristine Itwaru
That one seems to be the one. (laughs)
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah, yeah. That's a good one.
- CIChristine Itwaru
Yeah. I can count on one hand the companies who have blocked their product managers from speaking to customers. And those companies are not product companies. I mean, they do not believe in product management. They might say they do, but they don't. So that's number one. Number two is, how are you measuring your outcomes, and where are you making this all transparent, right? Is this happening consistently across the board, right? So, one problem we see in product teams across, uh, I mean, so many different places is, you might have somebody who's really passionate and really good at doing this stuff for their own vertical, and then it doesn't scale. So how are you doing this at scale so that your stakeholders are building this trust in you and making sure that they get the best out of the product team at any given turn? I'd say those are the two bullet points that seem to stick the most, is that quality time, giving the PM what they need, which is their time, to be able to drive the outcomes for the customer.
- 27:41 – 29:47
Why customer experience is the core of a PM’s role
- CIChristine Itwaru
- LRLenny Rachitsky
What is it that you think a PM will never offload, if that makes sense? Like, in your perspective, what's like the core of a PM's role, versus maybe product ops for now and then maybe potentially other roles that take off some of the stuff on their plate?
- CIChristine Itwaru
Speaking as a former PM, I would not ever give up spending time with customers and watching their pain. That sounds really bad customers, I'm sorry. But, you know, it, th- that's how I fell in love with product was I saw my cust- my internal customer, 10, 12 years back now, fighting with the keyboard, fighting with the mouse, (laughs) and I was just like, "Oh my gosh, what's this guy doing?" (laughs) And, and I think it was an, it was an experience that some people mi- might say, "Oh, I never want to be in that situation again, because it made me feel very uncomfortable that my product is not doing for this person what it needs to." But for me, it was, "How do I make this thing do what it needs to for this gentleman? How do I make this thing better?" And I, and I cannot see product managers saying, "I don't want to be a part of that conversation." Then you know what? I'm gonna contro- I'm gonna say it, then don't be in product.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Love it.
- CIChristine Itwaru
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah. I'm so curious what parts of the role get sliced off over time, 'cause that, I love that, that that's the core of it, is just like build great products that your customers want and use and want to pay for.
- CIChristine Itwaru
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
And then what else can people help you with along the side? 'Cause yeah, the PM role is just crazy. There's so many things going on ???
- CIChristine Itwaru
It's crazy.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
And...
- CIChristine Itwaru
It's crazy. Uh, this article that I wrote, uh, I dug into the history of product management. And it's like-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm.
- CIChristine Itwaru
... 100 years old in, in its form right now. Or not in its tr- in its current form, but it's about 100 years old. And just the evolution of what product managers have historically been responsible for. And then if you think about, just really sit down and think about what the world has turned into today, and how much noise we have coming at us, right? We talked about put your cell phone to do not disturb mode just now. And I learned a long time ago, put my cell phone on do not disturb mode. (laughs) And so imagine having a partner that helps you filter that noise. Mm-hmm.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah. Quite useful.
- CIChristine Itwaru
Yeah.
- 29:47 – 31:37
Who is doing the work of the product ops person before that role is created
- CIChristine Itwaru
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Along those lines, I was gonna go in a different direction, but as you mentioned that, there's all these roles adjacent to PM. There's program managers, project managers, agile product owners, and all. And then now product ops. I guess before a team has product ops, let me just ask this one straightforward question.
- CIChristine Itwaru
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Which of those roles generally does the thing that product ops can do for you? Is it the PM, or is it one of these other roles?
- CIChristine Itwaru
It's, it's a PM. It's a PM.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Okay.
- CIChristine Itwaru
Yeah. It's a PM, and then I would say because what I'm seeing in less mature product orgs who s- who first bring in product ops, the first thing they ask them to do is streamline the planning process. So, I would say it's a PM and maybe the agile...Or... Yeah, right? Righ- that's probably what it is today. I feel like program management and agile are starting to get a little bit close to each other-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- CIChristine Itwaru
... in what they do. And so, uh, it, it's most of the PM stuff because, you know, we're doing elements of their job that they have off to the side versus being able to focus on. But again, in lesser ma- mature orgs, the first thing is, how do I actually just get the people to plan the same way-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm.
- CIChristine Itwaru
... and give me the thing that they're planning (laughs) on doing?
- LRLenny Rachitsky
That's interesting, what you said there, that may be-
- CIChristine Itwaru
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... often a wedge to a product ops person joining, you know, your company, maybe as a first product ops person as the planni- helping with the planning process. Is that, is that kind of what you find?
- CIChristine Itwaru
It could be. The only thing that distinguishes product operations folks from program managers and agile is that product operations people know, understand the product, the customer-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm.
- CIChristine Itwaru
... and the inner workings of the business.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Cool. Yeah.
- CIChristine Itwaru
Mm-hmm.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mardy Kagan has some hot takes there about how-
- CIChristine Itwaru
Mm-hmm.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... product owners are never gonna, never gonna be great product managers. They don't really understand the customer needs and building product and... Anyway.
- CIChristine Itwaru
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
That's a whole other topic. I wanna talk about the career path. But before we get there, I want to go in a spicy direction.
- 31:37 – 37:40
Christine’s response to Casey Winters’s take on ops teams
- LRLenny Rachitsky
So Casey Winters-
- CIChristine Itwaru
Yes.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
He was a guest on this podcast at one point.
- CIChristine Itwaru
Mm-hmm.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
And he wrote this hot take many years ago about this kind of premise that operations in general often is kind of a, a, like a band-aid for inefficiency at a company, and companies often hire a bunch of ops people to just solve a problem, and often there are much better ways to solve that problem. For example, tooling or a new process. And his take is often a f- a person doing the thing is often s- should be the last resort, or it's like a temporary gap, and then over time you should strive to find a more efficient way to solve that problem than people. And I don't think he's saying, like, ops people in general are not necessary. It's just, it's, it's an easy default. So I'm curious what you think of that take. And generally, do you think product b- product ops is this long-term, we're gonna need more and more of this, or is it, or is there a, I don't know, different path to solving the problem that product ops solves?
- CIChristine Itwaru
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
And spicy take warning.
- CIChristine Itwaru
Yes, I remember this. I'll address that inefficiency comment first, right? I mentioned a little bit earlier, as, as roles in any industry or an, I guess, any role matures, like marketing or sales, this ops thing ends up being this natural progression. And it's not just because the role itself is maturing, it's also because the org is maturing. So what I found is, and what I'm finding with customers is that ops alignment across companies is what often ends up keeping the companies moving and keeping everybody aligned. And so, to say ops teams are generally a sign of inefficiency or the need for them is a sign of inefficiency is not always accurate. It's generally a sign of growth and opportunity, and, and people are really just trying to stay aligned and do the best for the people that are doing the thing, the product managing, the marketing, the selling within that org. Overall though, I will say I will agree with his points about getting in and, you know, maybe giving it off and using humans for other things. I wrote something recently, and I highlight something that he mentions here in this article and what he mentioned on, on your podcast, which is, ways product ops want to and should be standing up whatever processes or systems are needed, and then get out of the way so we can focus on driving more strategic value. I keep mentioning that more mature product ops folks end up being a very good strategic advisor to leaders in product and to the product teams, and that continues to be my belief. From day one, this has been my own personal goal for myself and for my team. I, myself recently switched roles here at Pendo because I did what I said I was gonna do, which was stand up the system, stand up the things that we knew we needed to do that were going to either be given off to another team or automated, and then get the rest of the humans that are here to do the other strategic things for the product team. Some of those are, how do we increase retention, like I mentioned, how do we focus on growth in this one area? How do we make the experience better in app? How do we do more better voice of customer management? My energy now at Pendo is I'm able to now go towards more impactful things for, not just the product team and the product community, but for our customers at large. So I'm basically saying, like, I did what I needed to do (laughs) and I'm ready to go. So, I think that's something though that people need to be very, very comfortable with. Like, very comfortable with. And, and if you change course and change your tune two, three years into doing this, and you built this team, you're like, "Here's what you're doing. Manage this process," people are gonna lose their minds. Like, change is constant, but, like, telling someone, "I don't n- I no longer need you to do that (laughs) ," it, it makes them a little bit nervous, right? So for years when I, I was interviewing folks for my team, I made that one point abundantly clear to them: Get into this role if you're comfortable letting go of things and moving on to something that is well worth your time. The company's gonna change, a process is gonna need to be tweaked. The company's gonna change, something's gonna need to be automated. We're gonna need to cut something else. Maybe ChatGPT is gonna make things very clear that humans are not always going to be doing the same things and we need to focus our energy elsewhere. But people do need to get comfortable with that ops role.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
I love that take. Generally, I think it aligns with what Casey's saying. Like what you're saying, what I'm hearing is, you may be a product op person today doing a s- bunch of stuff. Your job, in a sense, should be to automate as much of that as you can and find more strategic higher level things you could be doing instead of sitting there connecting Salesforce to, to Zendesk and, you know, maintaining that, or, um, I- aggrating customer feedback. In theory, there could be a tool that could do that for you-
- CIChristine Itwaru
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... and that's kind of part of the job. Is that-
- CIChristine Itwaru
Right.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Is that roughly what you're saying?
- CIChristine Itwaru
That's exactly what I'm saying.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
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- 37:40 – 46:11
Signs your company could benefit from a product ops team
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Zooming out a little bit and kinda building on the stuff we've been just talking about, what would you say are just signs that your company would benefit from a product ops team and that you're kind of a fit for building a product ops team?
- CIChristine Itwaru
I touched on this quite a bit, but that lack of transparency in many directions, up, across, down sometimes. Like people aren't very transparent about, "Hey, this came with funding, and here's what we need to do." So it, it's relevant for, you know, stakeholder management, getting stuff out to customers, internal teams and making sure they're aligned. Revenue teams in particular, that was the first thing we focused on at Pendo was really aligning our success org and our sales org to the product team. And we monitored success just within, I think, it was a quarter was the time-bound space that we had it in, on quality of inbound to the product team. So that was really cool. It was just more, like, thematic questions around, "Tell us what you guys do, because our customers would benefit from this," versus, "Teach me how to do this thing."
- LRLenny Rachitsky
I wanted to dig into the transparency piece. Is that, is that the same point as the transparency piece? Or are those two different kind of heuristics?
- CIChristine Itwaru
That's transparency, yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Okay.
- CIChristine Itwaru
So what happened was we realized that... We share this story actually quite openly, and I'll share it here again, which is one of the things that kicked off product ops for us was we had a really bad launch, a really, really bad launch. And it was a moment in company history where we realized that there was not transparency across the aisle, and there was this lack of readiness across the organization and out to customers for what was coming. It wasn't this piece that folks say, "Oh, well, they didn't know this was coming." Well, there's, there's two things. They... There's the knowing something's coming, and then there's the knowing what to do with it. And you can use just some sort of status keeping thing to say, "This is coming in Q4, and as we get closer, here's the date." But it's what to do with it, and how to position it, and how to talk about it, and all the things that was missing from it. And it was really bad, Lenny. It was really bad. And it was, (laughs) it was my fifth week here, and it was a moment of, "Whoa, I promised myself I'm not gonna let this happen again." That was one of the, the, the things where I said, "I'm gonna start to focus a little bit more on product ops within this director position I had just as director of product." And then I spun off, and I was like, "I think we need to do this thing and make it a bit more formal." Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Just to dig in on this story a little bit, so I didn't know this. So you were a product manager at Pendo. There was this huge disas- dis- let's not say disaster, bad, bad launch, and you kind of recognized, "There's this gap that maybe I could fill, that somebody needs to fill," and that you want to take that on. Can you talk a bit more about that? That's really interesting.
- CIChristine Itwaru
Yeah. They brought me in as their first director level, and so I was doing a bit of director plus a little bit IC stuff because we were starting to build up our product team. And, yes, that launch happened, and the product area was under development for about eight months from what I can remember. And I came in with the assumption and also knowing fully well that I am a brand new layer in this product team, and product people want ownership. They crave autonomy, they crave trust, and all of that good stuff. I, I know that per- you know, firsthand. I did not want to jump in and say, "Have you done X, Y, and Z?" Especially in the first four weeks of me being there. And yeah, it did not go very well. And so we recognized that we had more opportunity that we should have grabbed onto to test more with customers, to find feedback loops that were going to be healthy for the team and for our customers, to stand up ways for us to measure changes and impact of changes that this thing was making to our customers. This was the biggest launch in our company history since the launch of the product. And so it was a moment where we all sat down very openly and shared with each other what we all could have done better, and it wasn't just the product team. So, you know, I truly believe with a really healthy product operations person or team, you have that ability to impact change across a company. And so yes, we look at that story, and w- one day... (laughs) I remember us sitting there and being, "One day, we're gonna look back at this story, and we're gonna say, 'Oh, we can't remember that.' And we do now," four years later or four and a half years later. But yes, I felt really passionate about making sure that that didn't happen.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
The gaps you found are there's just, like, this lack of internal alignment. Sales didn't know what was going on. Customer support didn't know what was going on. Like, that felt like that's where the gap was 'cause that's kind of what led to this product ops...
- CIChristine Itwaru
Yes.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... opportunity, right?
- CIChristine Itwaru
Yes. There was, there was a lack of alignment across, again, like, they knew it was coming. They just didn't know the extent of what to expect and how to prepare customers or prospects for the change the way that we should have done it. There was definitely training. There was, there was stuff, you know, being done. It just, it just could have been a whole lot better. So there were gaps there. One more point was the piece after that was, you know, I, I love people. I love p- managing people. I love healthy team environment and dynamics, and that, as a product person, it means a lot to have that.Because if you have direct reports, you obviously want them to be happy and healthy. But as a product person, you have this system around you, even if you're not having people that report into you, where you feel ownership to make sure these people are healthy. And I remember even in my early days of being a PM, I wanted my engineers to be super happy. I wanted them to be proud of work that they were doing, and, and I wanted them to be comfortable letting go of things that we no longer needed. And I remember that moment being like a, looking around and looking at our engineers and seeing that they were like, "Hold on. What?" Like, you know, "Where do we go now?" (laughs) Like, "What do we do right now?" And you know, we wanted to take that moment and make it less about firefighting and more about being responsible and really customer-obsessed. And so, you know, that was our moment, our moment... or one of our moments for thinking about, "Okay, we might need product operations formalized here."
- LRLenny Rachitsky
It's interesting that your mind went to product ops, 'cause I think most companies would be like, "Oh, the, the product manager of this product screwed up. They didn't communicate enough to ensure it to sales. They didn't set up the marketing material well." You know, it's like, often falls on the product team and the product manager. What made you realize, "Oh, this is a product ops role and I need to move into that role," versus here we are?
- CIChristine Itwaru
Yeah. I didn't say in that moment, "We need a product ops role." Uh, all I said in that moment was, "We need to create a system so that this doesn't happen again."
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm.
- CIChristine Itwaru
And that goes back to my definition of what product ops is. It's, it's a thing, and it is also a person or a group of people. So... Or it's one, it could be one or the other, right? So, I wanna make sure we, we decouple that. It does not have to be humans. It can be that there's a system being created that is from a strong product person who knows how to get this team to be healthy.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
That's a really good way of thinking about it, and that clarifies it in a big way. Thank you. You were talking about transparency, and just like a sign that maybe you need product-
- CIChristine Itwaru
Yes.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... ops. And I think the thing that stuck with me there is just the quality of questions the product team gets from, say, sales, right?
- CIChristine Itwaru
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Is that kind of where you narrate...
- CIChristine Itwaru
Yeah. I get a lot of questions around, "You know, I'm investing in this." Like, "How do I measure the effectiveness of the team?" Like, all of these things. And it is really not easy to measure this in a quantitative measure just yet. Maybe one day, right? Actually, yes. No, one day, I feel like it might be coming sooner than we think. So, what we did was we looked at that transparency problem. We sent out this survey across both product managers and the sales and success teams, and we said, you know, "Where's your time going, PMs, right? And how much time are you giving on average to the revenue team to firefight? How much time do you have with customers as quality time?" And then on the flip side to the revenue team, "How many times do you find yourself asking questions?" You know, like, and we gave all of these like, you know, one to five and blah, blah, blah, those sorts of things, so that we can figure out where to place our energy. And we came up with this, "Okay, well, it seems like there's a lack of transparency across the two groups. Let's start with getting data out or information out to the revenue team from the product org." We created this product digest, still exists today and it's matured quite a bit, but it, it... I go back to this whole people can know when they're coming, but they need to know what it is they need to do with it. So, this thing was less about this da- "This thing's coming next quarter. Go tell your customers." It's more about, "Here's how you get ready for it. Here's how you get jazzed about it." And then the handoff, which is probably a question you're gonna have at some point, which is what's your line between PMM and product ops. The handoff is that we don't teach them to sell. We don't teach them to position. But we know that... the product intimately enough to help them understand the new value, to help them understand how to use the thing, and to make sure that they're hitting their growth.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Let's ask that question, if there's anything more and wha- yeah, what is
- 46:11 – 47:30
The line between product ops and product marketing
- LRLenny Rachitsky
that line between product ops and product marketing?
- CIChristine Itwaru
Yeah. I always say this and it, and it's worked. I haven't seen anybody dispute it, um, yet, but product marketing positions and helps the revenue team sell their lead gen, you know, for all of the outbound and the campaigns that they're running. And they are marketing, right? They're helping you at the end of the day make this thing sound amazing and do the right things with it. And for us it's about educating, and it's about helping our internal folks, our internal revenue team understand what is the added value? How do you now do this thing? How does this impact your role, right? We, we focus a bit on the customer success persona, for example, on Pendo. Customer success managers can go in. They can see their account health and what's going on and blah, blah, blah. How does this impact you as a customer success rep, and how do you then help your customers understand the value from it? Not, "Hey, can you help us upsell this thing? And here's how you do it."
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Great answer. Makes a lot of sense to me. Final topic, the career path of a product ops person.
- CIChristine Itwaru
Yes.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
A lot of people listening to this podcast are either PMs, uh, today or want to be PMs or thinking about becoming product, and I'll say product manager 'cause PM can mean a lot of things. And it's interesting, there's this new path that people can explore, product ops. I'm curious who you think might be
- 47:30 – 53:39
Who might be a good fit for a product ops role
- LRLenny Rachitsky
a fit for the product ops role versus the product manager role. Like, someone deciding, "Oh, man. Maybe I should go down this other route." What do you think are just signs that maybe you'd be a better fit or you'd enjoy that route better?
- CIChristine Itwaru
Yeah. I love that question because it makes me feel that this role has become embraced a bit more when I hear questions like that. In the past it was, "Do we need this role, and how d- how do we help get the buy-in?" And now it's more the acceptance of a product manager to maybe want to even become this. And I'm seeing more PMs, like I said, go into this space. So, it's no longer being seen so much as a threat. It's being seen as this partner, and I love that. So, just one, I'll say that. Um, I think if you're someone like me who absolutely loves, and I mentioned the story about the engineers and the team health and stuff. If you love creating that healthy team environment and one where there's cross-functional collaboration and it fuels you to empower the team more, it's a wonderful fit for you. Again, I, like I was a PM for years, and I felt that pain so much, and, uh, th- how much we had to do in order to make this small change and then figure out whether it's valuable. And I knew that there had to be a better way to get better outcomes to happen-But I also know that better outcomes don't just mean for the product, it means better outcomes for the entire product team, for the customer experience at large, and ultimately for the business. And so, I think that that's one thing if, if you're curious and you really wa- wanna learn more about that side of the house, like a an... One of the beautiful things I saw was one of my product ops managers fall more in love with understanding the business as she was starting to mature in her product ops career, and I thought that was really cool. She had already had product background and she was like, "I wanna understand the inner workings here so that I know how to help these people." So, the other thing is like if, I think if, if you're a PM having issues with the role that you're currently in, I think you a- need to remember that you are there to solve problems. And that's a very simple thing that we talked about. What are the things that PMs won't shed and shouldn't shed and that's going to talk to customers? Well, you have to talk to customers in order t- to, to solve the problems, figure out the right problems to solve. You do that in product ops as well. You don't have to go out to customers externally, but my customers and, and the people I speak to are internally, and they are helping me understand the pain that the product team is tied to. So, you know, if you don't love solving problems through building brand new features and building a product, then how can you help contribute to solving other ones? If you're a true problem solver, think about whether you wanna do that. So, if you know the pain, what can you do to build a better experience overall that can ultimately impact your business?
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Do you find most product ops people, at least at this point, are former product managers? Like, what would be the pie chart of last job was product manager versus not of existing product ops people?
- CIChristine Itwaru
I gotta put out a new survey.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
(laughs)
- CIChristine Itwaru
I do. I really have to put out a new survey. Initially, I saw a lot more folks moving in from management consulting, from customer success, from technical success. I haven't seen anyone from sales move in yet, and I have seen a couple PMs. Now, that's the day-to-day product ops manager. I will tell you that the people who are standing up the product ops orgs and buil- being the first product ops hire, the d- the kind of like leadership level, are former product people. And I strongly advocate for product ops leaders to have done that role, to have actually had hands-on product experience building and understanding customer problems and feeling that pain. Because you are, you very quickly realize where to place your efforts and where your team's efforts should go, and that helps you from an efficiency perspective, and the business knows you're not just dilly-dallying.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
That's really interesting.
- CIChristine Itwaru
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
That makes a lot of sense.
- CIChristine Itwaru
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
The... Just the roles you named, again, where product ops people come from. You said customer success. What are the others again?
- CIChristine Itwaru
I have seen technical success. I've seen management consulting. Yeah. That would... That... The management consulting piece makes a bit... Makes a ton of sense to me. I think there's that data piece that they really like to lean into, and advisory. But yeah, and then the leadership ones coming in from, from product leader roles. And that's been a happy change too, right? Seeing a director say, "I now wanna move into a position to coach the teams and to help build a stronger product team overall, and I, I don't feel like building product here."
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Fascinating. For someone that's like, "Wow, I wanna do this job. This sounds rad," what advice would you give for people to pursue this role and get a gig in product ops?
- CIChristine Itwaru
Mm-hmm. Well, one, it's a good thing that there's no shortage of these roles. (laughs) I'll... They're up to... I would say that there, there, there are a lot of these roles open out in the industry. Be intentional about what you want to do, because right now it's still in a bit of, well, what, what are we doing in product operations as an, as a product management community? And there's no consistency industry to industry, size to size, team to team. It is very different. So, really think about your strengths. Do you, do you love data? Are you a person who thrives on being able to make beauty out of this mess that you're seeing, right?
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- CIChristine Itwaru
And advise people and help them understand, "Maybe this is a direction that we should be going in?" Are you technical where you're like, "No, I actually really enjoy doing the quantitative side of things," and you love, you truly enjoy working with data science teams and you really like to bring that data aspect to the product teams? You could probably find a mix of both, right? There are people who, who like doing both of those things. Do you thrive on, just generally, I mentioned this and I keep saying it, like, standing up that system because you know that if you hadn't, you would've been a better PM. Like, I think that that's a big thing there. If, if people realize that there's a better way to do it and they no longer have to do it all, but they can do a slice of it in order to drive efficiency for the organization, then start, you know, thinking about going out there and doing it. So... And the other thing, too, is look at those roles and make sure that you fine-tooth comb those job descriptions. Some of them are, are very vague because they, they're just trying to figure it out on their own as well.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- CIChristine Itwaru
So, the more you know what you want to do as a product person, the more you know what to weed out from these roles.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Are there red flags when you're looking at a product ops job description of
- 53:39 – 54:08
Red flags for product ops roles (that apply to any role)
- LRLenny Rachitsky
like, "Hm, this isn't really the kind of role you, you want?"
- CIChristine Itwaru
I think this is a red flag for any role. I mention that it's really hard right now to put a number to the success of the role.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- CIChristine Itwaru
Or on the success of the role. But if there's no, "This is how you will be measured," or, "This is what we're looking at as a successful outcome for this person in this role," I would say that's probably a red flag.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Hm.
- CIChristine Itwaru
But it's table stakes. People need to have that on their job descriptions.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Final question.
- CIChristine Itwaru
Yes.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Something
- 54:08 – 57:18
How product teams are structured at Pendo
- LRLenny Rachitsky
I try to get to with people from new companies that I haven't talked to before is just to get a general sense of how the product org is structured at the company, just 'cause people are always curious just, like, how do you structure product teams? And, and so I guess broadly, I'd love to hear just, just like how is the Pendo team, product team structured?
- CIChristine Itwaru
Mm-hmm.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Like, what are the buckets? And then also, is their product ops person integrated into each cross-functional product team?
- CIChristine Itwaru
Yeah. I too love to learn about this. We're broken into, uh, major areas of the business or revenue streams, and we have general managers over those, and the GMs actually sit in the product team, which is nice. All have PM background. All...... really, really experienced and incredible. We also have a, a head of growth, so there's that component to it as well. Then you've generally got the senior directors, their teams of product managers who are responsible for different areas in the products that we've got. One product that's our core product and very mature, broken down into different components there. We have, you know, a newer product where that's just one straight product team versus like having many different directors. We do have a product ops person integrated into these teams. I'd say probably all of them at this point. But the key thing here is they share themselves across two or three teams. Something going through listeners' minds right now is, "Christine, is there a ratio of product ops people to team?" I would say that at one point I felt like there might have been, and I don't think that, I don't think that's the case anymore. And it's, again, based on my experience and what I'm learning. We operate pretty lean, and a lot of people are having to operate very lean right now. So every few quarters, we look at our goals. We determine who or what goals need a product ops person and for what reason. We're really intentional about it. As an example, I use this saying, "Respect the hustle," with my team a little bit for the newer product that's still kind of finding its way. And the last thing you want to do as a product, which for somebody who... I had a legacy product in my last job, a, one that I was building from the ground up and one that I was just responsible for getting out the door, sunsetting at some point. You don't want anyone stifling creativity with any sort of process or some time bound this or anything like that. So, the last thing you want to do is introduce something in there that feels like that. You want them to hit the ground running. And so we don't over-index on things like a certain planning process, or, you know, "You need to get this to us because the other teams have." It's like, "We need to know this thing by this timeframe. We'll do what we need to do from there." That's it. And we're also quicker with the data, right? Like, um, voice of customer stuff takes a little bit longer for a more mature product team and, and org. This is more like, "What are we learning right now? And how quickly can we communicate this over to that team so they can iterate really quickly?"
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Awesome. And to come back to the structure just briefly.
- CIChristine Itwaru
Mm-hmm.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
So you have GMs, business units. Within the business units, you have directors of product that report up to the GM-
- CIChristine Itwaru
Mm-hmm.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... within each... And the directors of product have cross-functional product team that they operate that build specific features and elements-
- CIChristine Itwaru
Correct.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... of the larger product. And then there's a product ops person supporting some of these teams, and they're shared across teams.
- CIChristine Itwaru
Mm-hmm. Yep, and you've got-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Got it.
- CIChristine Itwaru
Everybody rolls up to a CPO. CPO's got, yes, got all of us.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Christine, with that, we've reached our very exciting
- 57:18 – 1:06:39
Lightning round
- LRLenny Rachitsky
lightning round. I've got six questions for you. I'm gonna just fire 'em away. Does that sound good?
- CIChristine Itwaru
Yes, let's do it.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Let's do it. Two or three books that you recommend most to other people.
- CIChristine Itwaru
Classic is Inspired by Marty Cagan. It's one of the reasons I really fell in love with the product. It's inspirational. Um, Leaders Eat Last, uh, Simon Sinek. I really like that book too. That's more leadership style and, and making sure you're putting your team first, which is something I strongly believe in. This is a plug, but I also really like the book, and it's very practical so it falls in that category, which is The Product Led Organization by our CEO Todd Olson. Really good book for right now especially, with people really going through this transformation. And there's an old book that I have that's sitting on the shelf. It's Product Roadmaps Relaunched. It is really old. Like, I mean, I don't want to date myself, but it's almost 20 years old when I was in college. But it's really, really valuable, and I can, I can reference it just for a quick, "Oh, yeah, I forgot about that from a communication perspective for a roadmap." Like, this is really cool. So...
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Favorite other podcast?
- CIChristine Itwaru
The Product Experience podcast for Mind the Product. I really like that one. Little bit similar to this other favorite one I'm on right now.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- CIChristine Itwaru
But lots of really good product people and just very practical advice too. I really like the, uh, for leadership, I like HBR IdeaCast. It's just, again, I like to balance the business side and the people side with the technical on leaderships.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Favorite recent movie or TV show?
- CIChristine Itwaru
Because I have kids, my brain is flooded generally with kid shows. I would say this year, it was between the new Matilda movie, which is based on the Broadway production, which was based on the old Matilda movie, but it's really, really good, really well done. And then there's this movie, I think it's called Rise. Have you seen it? It's b- It's about the Giannis, I cannot say, forgive me, his last name, but he's on the Milwaukee Bucks, basketball player. It's about overcoming adversity, and just struggle, and really pushing through and giving it your all. And I think that one is, is a really good one. Add it to your list if you haven't. It's called Rise. TV, I have, um, food. I, I don't have a favorite TV show. I've just finished watching White Lotus, if that qualifies. But that's kind of-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Qualifies. It's, uh...
- CIChristine Itwaru
Get my brain out of...
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... the most-
- CIChristine Itwaru
Yeah, it was so good.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... the most popular mentioned TV show on this podcast.
- CIChristine Itwaru
Yeah, I would say for TV in general, uh, you give me anything food, I love cooking, and I'll eat, I'll cook an entire massive meal, three course, whatever, sit down and eat it while I'm watching, or... So, yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yum.
- CIChristine Itwaru
Mm-hmm.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Favorite interview question that you like to ask when you're interviewing people?
- CIChristine Itwaru
If you could choose any career outside of what you're doing, what would it be and why?
- LRLenny Rachitsky
What do you look for in an answer there that tells you that this is a strong candidate versus not?
- CIChristine Itwaru
There are skills that are a part of that other role that I would lean into. So like, if somebody were to ask me that question, I would tell you a chef. And it's about experience, and it's about constantly refining your craft, and it's about constantly looking to delight. And I think that speaks to my love for product. It's all about that end state for the customer. So, I always ask that question, and I, I look to see like, you know, what is it? Are they looking for fame? Are they looking for, you know, just a temporary role? It tell, it's really telling. Like, you dig into the qualities of what makes a good candidate for the other thing, and you can figure out a lot.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Fascinating. And if they're watching this and learning this secret, that's a good sign too. They're doing the research.
- CIChristine Itwaru
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Top five SaaS products that you love, use at work, other than Pendo, that you want to mention.
- CIChristine Itwaru
I got to say Pendo.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
We already know, we already know that's on the list.
- CIChristine Itwaru
Got to say Pendo. Uh, yeah. I love Miro. I love Miro so much. During the pandemic, this became an essential tool for so many teams, like I- I brought it into our company and I, and I was a big advocate for it at my last one as well, just the collaboration and connection. Figma, along the same lines. I think like Figma's really great at that for our design team and, and the rest of product, so that one's been really good. Seismic is one that I really like as well, that's the content management system for our go-to-market teams, so it really plays well into like the, "How do we make sure we, (laughs) we give them what they need and the tool that they need to be in?" Gong is another one. I think Gong's really great. Like, I've watched them go from the early days and we were, I think we were an early customer, or we were using early on, and just the way that they help, they've piv- I think they pivoted at some point or they've definitely upped their messaging on the coaching for their teams and us being able to dig into the qualitative insights that we get on those calls as product people is really good too, so yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Great list. Uh, ones that people haven't mentioned before, so that's always fun. Final question, what's something relatively minor that you've changed in Pendo's product development process that has had a tremendous impact on the way that you build product?
- CIChristine Itwaru
This one's gonna sound really elementary, so, or for some people really elementary, but for some people they're gonna be like, "Uh-huh. I totally feel that." Early on, we started bringing in engineers to customer meetings more and more, and you know, you don't wanna typecast or profile an engineer, but generally they're not raising their hand really and being like, "Yeah! I'm gonna come and join," blah, blah, blah. Like, they, they want to make sure they're doing their job and building the, building the experience. But it's so simple and it's so effective, and when we started doing it, the response from the engineering team was great, and then also it helped us dig into a different side of the customer while we were on call sometimes. Some of them were flies on the wall, some of them were like actually engaging with the engineers and help them increase their confidence in speaking to customers, so I don't know, I feel like that just ended up changing a lot of the way that we started planning and, and, and making sure that they were, th- their voice had a certain amount of weight or even more weight than it did before in the product development lifecycle. We respect their time. I remember some were very nervous and being like, "Ah, I gotta do all this other stuff." But, you know, they're like, "Okay, I'll try it," and then all of a sudden they're like, "Whoa, I really wanna do this more and more." But it's just really being able to see that pain for them firsthand from a customer, or the delight and frustration was very impactful, so that's my answer, and I feel like if you're not doing that as a product manager or product leader, then you better get on that train real fast, 'cause it really, it's life-changing for, for the entire team.
Episode duration: 1:06:39
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