Level Up Your Program with ProductOps
Summary
Product Operations builds the foundation for product and delivery excellence by reinforcing product strategy with metrics, infrastructure, business processes, and best practices. It brings operational discipline to large, complex programs, enabling product managers to maximize the value and outcomes their teams deliver. In this talk, Ivana Ng, Director of Product at Nava PBC, will draw on her experiences co-building modern, user-centered ProductOps and Product Management practices at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Department of Veterans Affairs, to show what ProductOps looks like in reality, and how it can level up your program.
Key Insights
-
•
Nava had to onboard 185 people from multiple companies in three months to work on the CMS cloud IT project, nearly doubling their own company size.
-
•
Product operations was crucial to coordinate a large multi-vendor team and maintain quality and continuity on a highly impactful government project.
-
•
Government contracts require teams to ship software immediately while scaling rapidly, which demands strong operational foundations.
-
•
Shared, government-approved collaboration tools reduce licensing headaches and improve productivity across multi-company government projects.
-
•
Product ops involves defining processes, tools, and data experimentation to enable Agile, user-centered design at scale.
-
•
Starting every feature with a product brief aligns teams on goals, success criteria, and rollout plans to maintain consistent high-quality delivery.
-
•
Defining clear roles and delivery tasks early reduces interpersonal tensions and accelerates team cohesiveness in multi-disciplinary teams.
-
•
Embedding success metrics and measurement capabilities into product development ensures data-driven decisions and ongoing validation.
-
•
Running user hypothesis-driven experiments, such as simplifying document upload flows and adding targeted help text, led to a 12% compliance increase in Vermont's benefit application.
-
•
Teaching government agencies product thinking builds internal capacity that outlasts contractors and sustains long-term improvements.
Notable Quotes
"We essentially had to stand up a mid-size company to deliver on this contract."
"Government expects us to establish large teams while also shipping software immediately."
"Product operations is the blueprint for rapid but sustainable growth."
"Every successful enterprise has operational functions responsible for better collaboration, increased output, more efficiencies, and higher visibility."
"Shared tools have a lot of benefits, including streamlining license management and enabling us to test out processes efficiently."
"Data coupled with user feedback helps product teams develop solutions that maximally improve the user experience and deliver impact."
"We start every new feature with a product brief that outlines the problem, how we’ll measure success, and rollout strategy."
"Having a shared understanding of roles really cuts down on interpersonal tensions during team formation."
"If we can teach government partners to be product thinkers, that results in impact that lasts beyond contracts."
"In government projects, experimentation is the process of developing hypotheses and validating them through user research and iteration."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"Everyone is a designer."
Maria GiudiceRemaking the Making Company: Moving from Product to Experience
June 9, 2016
"Product managers are responsible for value – making sure something valuable is being created that meets real needs."
Christian CrumlishAMA with Christian Crumlish, author of Product Management for UX People
March 24, 2022
"Advancement in design maturity requires a tight business partnership between product management and design ops leaders."
Rima Campbell Amrit S BhachuIncrease Productivity and Drive Business Impact
September 24, 2024
"We still think of accessibility as a binary when it should be recognized as a continuum."
Sam ProulxTo Boldly Go: The New Frontiers of Accessibility
June 10, 2022
"Empathy is not a single thing but a combination of intellectual understanding, emotional resonance, and compassionate action."
Victor UdoewaRadical Participatory Design: Decolonizing Participatory Design Processes
December 10, 2021
"If design, product, and development use different tools, we end up talking past one another."
Jon Fukuda Amy Evans Ignacio Martinez Joe MeersmanThe Big Question about Innovation: A Panel Discussion
September 25, 2024
"Radical participatory design is some of the hardest work I have ever done; it takes more than intention, it takes significant care and time."
Rachael Dietkus, LCSWTrauma-Responsive Design: Reimagining the Future of Design Now
December 10, 2021
"We had to allow people to grieve first before we could make a plan for healing."
Kyria Stephens Marlon KernerPower to Heal: Civic Design in the Aftermath of Tragedy
November 17, 2022
"Transparency can be a master source of efficiency when people are trusted to share."
Niko LaitinenAdaptable Org Design for Resilient Times
June 10, 2021
