How does your product operations team partner with your data teams? Who owns what?

Here at Oscar, we’re fortunate to have a robust Product Analytics team that sits within our Data function. Our Product Managers work directly with Product Analytics and build dashboards. As a result, Product Ops doesn’t have specific analytics or data responsibilities, which is different from how some Product Ops teams are scoped. (Pendo’s definition of Product Ops, for example, likes to include product analytics/usage within the scope of Product Ops: “Product ops pros are often responsible for helping product management make more reliable decisions by equipping them with relevant usage data.“)

Over time, I could see Product Ops’ relationship with Product Analytics evolving at Oscar – after a PM defines metrics with the analytics team, Product Ops could take over the monitoring, reporting and insights. But we’ve got a lot on our plate already, so until it’s identified as an urgent pain point, I’m going to let our Product Managers continue to take the lead there!

Data teams are critical partners to product ops. I've tended to structure product operations as the owners of the plan, strategies, operations, outcomes. We partner with data teams to inform strategies, measure ops effectiveness and report on growth / trends. As part of a product resourcing plan, having data team alignment / designation is critical.