What do you see as an ideal organizational structure and placement for Product Ops?

In my experience, it’s worked out extremely well to have Product Operations report directly to the Head of Product. Here at Oscar, I directly report into Jesse Horowitz, our Chief Product Officer and sit on his leadership team. This allows me to have full visibility into and alignment with Product’s priorities and staffing, which allows me to make global trade-offs. I’ve found this structure to be extremely effective.

Other alternatives I’ve seen:

• Product Ops rolling up into Operations – this can work and be effective if the primary focus of the Product Operations team is to enable and educate the company’s internal operations team & customers.
• Benefit: Product Ops is deeply aware and empathetic of the operations teams, their processes and workflows.
• Risk: Product Ops loses touch with the Product Managers and is viewed as a downstream stakeholder, rather than an embedded member of the team.
• Product Ops rolling up within a central “Biz Ops” function – this can work and be effective if the primary focus of Product Operations is to develop best practices and coach Product Managers.
• Benefit: Product Ops can drive departmental changes and efficiencies in close partnership with other Operational teams (Sales Ops, Marketing Ops, DevOps / Engineering Ops).
• Risk: Product Ops is viewed as a consultant who doesn’t understand the day-to-day context of Product Management.
• Product Ops rolling up within Product Areas/Verticals – this can work and be effective if each domain has specific needs and requires subject matter expertise.
• Benefit: Product Ops can tailor their work to the priorities of their specific domain area.
• Risk: Product Ops becomes locally optimized and inflexible. Down the road, Product Ops may be incentivized to create (or hold on to) tasks that they could otherwise work themselves out of.