Why Product Leaders Need Product Operations

Cheryl Michael, CPO of CentralReach, argues that product leaders who want to act with confidence need a structured, data-driven approach to product operations rather than relying on intuition alone. She frames product leadership as a maturity path, from subject-matter expert to strategic leader who ties product work to business value. Her core point is that a leader should, like a strong CEO, keep a pulse on both internal delivery capabilities and external market factors. She recommends building a cross-functional base of facts across sales, customer success, finance and usage data before acting, then turning that evidence into a clear story for executives and the board. She also describes how PM teams should mature from backlog hygiene to portfolio dashboards tied to outcomes. The piece matters because it links operational rigor directly to alignment, investment decisions and product-led growth.

01Key takeaways

• Gather cross-functional data from sales, customer success, finance and usage tools before acting on intuition.
• Track both internal delivery capabilities and external factors like market fit, pricing and competitive differentiation.
• Frame decisions around the questions your executives and board care about, such as investment, prioritization and cost.
• Use portfolio dashboards covering revenue, churn and resource allocation to align stakeholders on a measurable plan.
• Help PMs progress from backlog hygiene to prioritization and outcome-driven ownership of initiatives.

02Key sections

Growing up in product

The author describes a typical maturity path for product leaders, moving from tactical product expertise to strategic vision and finally to evidence-based portfolio management.

Being the CEO of your product

Drawing on what strong CEOs do, the author argues product leaders should track operational data and KPIs covering both internal delivery capacity and external market factors.

Baselining your product's operations

Before acting, leaders should gather cross-functional data on portfolio performance, customer segments, R&D spend and revenue or cost levers to support decisions with evidence.

Turning data into action

Leaders should build a story for executives and the board that answers specific questions about investment, priorities and cost, aligned to their goals.

Levelling up your team's product operations

PM teams mature from backlog management to prioritization and then to portfolio dashboards that connect product work to outcomes and OKRs.

03From the post

“As a leader in product, you have likely come across situations in which your hunches or intuition weren’t enough to guide your team or company forward. Whether its due to pushback from other stakeholders, increasing competitive pressures, or a changing technology landscape - high growth tech companies require us to constantly be collecting data and insights around our product, our…”

04Frameworks mentioned

Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.