The Product Operations Competency Model
A practical framework for hiring, evaluating, and developing Product Ops professionals
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I didn’t set out to build a competency model. I set out to survive the ambiguity.
In one of my earlier roles, I was standing up a Product Ops function without a map. The expectations were vague. The team wasn’t sure what to hand off, what to own, or how to measure success. And when it came time to hire or support someone’s growth there was no clear language to describe what “good” looked like, let alone “great.”
I’d seen other Product Ops models before. Some focused on tools, others on org design or maturity stages. But none of them helped me make day-to-day decisions about what this role should do or how to help someone get better at it. They were too high-level, too narrow, or too abstract.
So I started sketching. Not to create a framework but to create clarity. First for myself, then for my team. Over time, that sketch became something much more structured. A way to break down the actual work of Product Ops into skills, behaviors, and expectations. A lens we could use to hire more intentionally, support people more consistently, and shape a function that could scale.
That’s what this model is.
The Product Operations Competency Model is a practical framework that can be used for hiring, evaluating, and developing Product Ops professionals.
It defines eight core competency areas and four levels of proficiency giving teams a shared language to assess, grow, and align Product Ops capability at any stage.
If you’re in Product Ops, this model can help you name your strengths, focus your development, and advocate for your value. If you lead a team, it can give structure to hiring and performance. If you work in HR or talent, it can help you design roles and expectations that reflect the real-world demands of this function.
Here’s what follows:
A breakdown of the model’s core areas and levels
A simple approach to skill assessment for individuals and teams
Guidance for using this model in hiring, career development, and org planning
Real-world patterns to look for and prompts to take action
Tools you can use today to assess and help your team improve
See end of the post for links to the tools
I built this model because I needed it.
I’m sharing it and a few tools to get you started because I know I’m not the only one.
The Competency Model at a Glance
The Product Operations Competency Model helps you define what “good” looks like at every level of Product Ops, across every major area of the work. It gives you a clear, structured way to assess skills, support growth, and build stronger teams.
It’s built on two core dimensions…competency and proficiency:
The 8 Core Competency Areas
These are the essential dimensions where Product Ops shows up, whether you’re supporting day-to-day delivery or leading strategic change:
Operational Excellence & Process Optimization
How you reduce friction, improve systems, and make things run better. This includes coordinating cross-functional initiatives, resolving blockers, and aligning teams, timelines, and rituals to make delivery smoother.
Data Analysis & Insights
How you collect, interpret, and activate data to inform decisions. This includes connecting data signals across functions, elevating actionable insights, and creating scalable feedback loops that influence product strategy.
Cross-Functional Collaboration & Communication
How you build alignment, navigate conflict, and move work forward across teams. This includes facilitating complex discussions, aligning on priorities across departments, and resolving friction points
Technical Acumen & Tool Management
How you manage and strategically evolve the product tech stack so tools serve the work, not the other way around. This includes setting tool strategy, integrating systems, leading vendor evaluations, and building scalable infrastructure.
Strategic Alignment & Business Acumen
How you connect ops work to product and business goals, influence roadmap decisions, anticipate business needs, enable portfolio-level thinking, and translate strategic goals into operational plans.
Change Management & Adaptability
How you lead transitions, manage ambiguity, and respond to shifting priorities. This includes guiding teams through transformation, reducing change fatigue, and embedding new ways of working.
Customer Focus & Empathy
How you keep internal and external users at the center of operational decisions. This includes surfacing patterns in customer feedback, enabling validation loops, and ensuring customer needs are reflected in planning and delivery.
Leadership & Team Development
How you influence, coach, and build a healthy, high-performing team. This includes mentoring others, fostering a culture of trust and growth, and helping to shape and develop the function itself.
4 Proficiency Levels
Each competency is mapped across four levels of proficiency, aligned to increasing scope and influence:
Level 1: Foundational / Associate
Learning the ropes. Executes defined tasks, follows process, and builds familiarity with tools and context.
Level 2: Proficient / Manager
Independently effective. Operates independently, improves systems, collaborates cross-functionally.
Level 3: Advanced / Senior Manager
Leading beyond your lane. Leads initiatives, mentors others, drives strategic improvements.
Level 4: Expert / Lead / Director
Designing the system. Sets org-wide direction, builds systems that scale, drives transformation.
Note: These levels aren’t just about titles, they reflect how Product Ops practitioners operate, lead, and influence outcomes as they grow. Individuals may show up at different levels across competencies depending on role design, org maturity, and personal strengths.
This model is used by teams to:
Define, scope, and level roles
Run structured performance reviews
Identify team-wide capability gaps
Create coaching plans and onboarding guides
Align hiring panels on what good looks like
And it can stand alone or plug into existing org systems like career ladders and performance rubrics. Whether you’re leading a scaled Product Ops function or operating solo, this model brings structure, visibility, and leverage to the role. It’s designed to adapt across org stages and levels of maturity, and includes flexibility for how each competency shows up in different company contexts.
Here’s one example of how it’s been used:
A Head of Product came to me unsure whether one of their Ops team members was ready to move into a lead role. There was tension and a lack of clarity about expectations. We pulled out the competency model and walked through it together. The team member rated themselves. Their manager rated them separately. Then they sat down, compared notes, and had the first clear, grounded conversation about growth they’d had in months. It turned out the person wasn’t quite ready yet but they were close. The conversation ended with a specific development plan, a shared understanding of the gaps, and renewed motivation on both sides. No politics. No guesswork. Just clarity.
Next, I’ll walk through each competency in more detail so you can start recognizing patterns and using the model to guide real decisions. Each section includes a definition, example behaviors by level, and reflection prompts so you can apply it immediately to team discussions, hiring conversations, or your own development planning.
Reviewing all eight can also help you spot gaps across your team, surface strengths you didn’t know you had, and show the full scope of value Product Ops brings to your organization.
Operational Excellence & Process Optimization
What this competency is about: This competency is about enabling consistent, high-quality execution across a product organization. It goes beyond smoothing the edges of delivery it’s about proactively shaping how work gets done. That includes orchestrating cross-functional delivery, aligning rituals to real team needs, and simplifying the system so teams can focus on outcomes instead of wrangling process. Done well, this competency removes friction at scale without adding unnecessary layers.
What it looks like at each level:
Level 1: Foundational – Follows existing systems and rituals. Flags process pain points but depends on others to act. Learns the delivery rhythm and team context.
Level 2: Proficient – Keeps systems running and adapts rituals to fit team needs. Reduces local inefficiencies. Shares feedback and drives small improvements.
Level 3: Advanced – Leads multi-team delivery systems. Resolves dependencies and misalignment. Designs or redesigns processes to support clarity, speed, or predictability.
Level 4: Expert – Defines and evolves how work flows across the org. Aligns tooling, rituals, roles, and reporting to create consistency and reduce complexity. Coaches others to solve operational issues at scale.
Reflection prompts:
What’s one delivery friction point you helped eliminate or improve?
How have you adapted rituals or systems to make them more useful?
What’s your approach to solving the invisible or recurring process pain others accept as normal?
Data Analysis & Insights
What this competency is about: This competency is about transforming signals into clarity. Product Ops plays a critical role in connecting scattered data points, quantitative and qualitative, and turning them into insights that guide decisions. It’s not about dashboards for their own sake. It’s about knowing what to look for, spotting patterns, and helping others act on what matters.
What it looks like at each level:
Level 1: Foundational – Consumes and shares data others create. Asks thoughtful questions and begins identifying patterns.
Level 2: Proficient – Pulls relevant data for team needs. Surfaces trends and uses insights to influence conversations and choices.
Level 3: Advanced – Connects multiple data sources to form narratives. Enables teams to make smarter decisions through actionable, well-timed insights.
Level 4: Expert – Builds systems for continuous insight generation. Shapes measurement practices across the org. Ensures data informs strategy and planning—not just reporting.
Reflection prompts:
When have your insights changed the direction of a product or team?
What’s your approach to connecting data from multiple sources?
How do you ensure data leads to decisions—not just dashboards?
Cross-Functional Collaboration & Communication
What this competency is about: This competency is about navigating the human complexity of product work. Product Ops helps translate between teams, bridge communication gaps, and move work forward when things are ambiguous or tense. It’s the difference between checking alignment and creating it.
What it looks like at each level:
Level 1: Foundational – Participates in cross-functional conversations. Flags misalignment and asks clarifying questions.
Level 2: Proficient – Helps resolve local breakdowns in coordination. Facilitates meetings and documents shared understanding.
Level 3: Advanced – Anticipates points of friction and resolves them early. Builds habits and rituals that strengthen collaboration.
Level 4: Expert – Designs and evolves systems for communication and alignment across functions. Builds shared language, rituals, and norms that scale.
Reflection prompts:
How do you help teams align without relying on authority?
What’s one moment you helped a stuck team make progress?
How do you anticipate and prevent misalignment between roles or teams?
Technical Acumen & Tool Management
What this competency is about: This competency is about making sure tools enable not inhibit great product work. It’s not about being the admin or owner of every tool. It’s about understanding how systems connect, guiding tool decisions, and scaling tooling intentionally.
What it looks like at each level:
Level 1: Foundational – Uses core tools appropriately. Flags issues and learns how tools relate to process.
Level 2: Proficient – Manages team-level tooling. Supports onboarding and proposes tool improvements based on user needs.
Level 3: Advanced – Leads tool evaluations and integrations. Aligns tools across multiple teams to improve workflows and data consistency.
Level 4: Expert – Sets org-wide tooling strategy. Connects systems across the product org. Balances usability, scalability, and governance.
Reflection prompts:
What’s one tooling decision you influenced that improved workflow or visibility?
How do you evaluate whether a tool still meets the team’s needs?
What’s your philosophy for scaling tools across teams without adding chaos?
Strategic Alignment & Business Acumen
What this competency is about: This competency is about making strategy visible and actionable. Product Ops helps connect high-level goals to day-to-day decisions. That means enabling prioritization, surfacing tradeoffs, and helping teams deliver on what matters.
What it looks like at each level:
Level 1: Foundational – Understands company and product goals. Connects work to broader objectives with support.
Level 2: Proficient – Aligns team rituals and metrics with business priorities. Helps translate strategy into execution.
Level 3: Advanced – Shapes portfolio-level planning and prioritization. Connects operational plans to outcomes.
Level 4: Expert – Partners with execs to evolve strategy systems. Aligns planning, delivery, and communication loops to reflect what matters most.
Reflection prompts:
What have you done to make strategy clearer for others?
How do you help teams stay aligned to evolving priorities?
What’s your role in turning high-level goals into real delivery?
Change Management & Adaptability
What this competency is about: This competency is about helping teams evolve without losing their footing. Product Ops doesn’t just land a new process it helps ensure it sticks. That includes preparing people for change, navigating resistance, and building confidence during transitions.
What it looks like at each level:
Level 1: Foundational – Adjusts to change with guidance. Communicates questions and flags confusion.
Level 2: Proficient – Helps explain and reinforce new ways of working. Supports adoption by modeling change.
Level 3: Advanced – Leads change efforts for a team or system. Plans transition steps, measures success, and adjusts based on feedback.
Level 4: Expert – Builds scalable change strategies. Guides org-wide transitions. Prevents fatigue by embedding change thoughtfully.
Reflection prompts:
What’s a change you’ve helped land well?
How do you help others through uncertainty or resistance?
When do you know it’s time to push for change—or protect stability?
Customer Focus & Empathy
What this competency is about: This competency is about keeping real people at the center of product operations. Product Ops helps elevate user insight internal and external and ensure it shapes how teams prioritize, build, and reflect.
What it looks like at each level:
Level 1: Foundational – Engages with user feedback when prompted. Connects it to local work.
Level 2: Proficient – Brings customer insights into rituals. Surfaces patterns in feedback and shares them with the team.
Level 3: Advanced – Builds systems to gather and synthesize customer data. Enables product decisions grounded in real needs.
Level 4: Expert – Ensures customer perspective is embedded across planning, prioritization, and process. Builds empathy into how the org operates.
Reflection prompts:
What’s something you changed after listening to customers?
How do you elevate insights from user research or support?
What system have you built or influenced that keeps users visible?
Leadership & Team Development
What this competency is about: This competency is about growing people, not just improving systems. Product Ops often influences without formal authority so this skill includes coaching, mentoring, and shaping culture.
What it looks like at each level:
Level 1: Foundational – Supports teammates. Asks for feedback and shares openly. Models reliability and curiosity.
Level 2: Proficient – Coaches peers and contributes to team rituals. Helps onboard new members and build shared norms.
Level 3: Advanced – Leads with trust and clarity. Gives feedback that helps others grow. Builds systems for team health and reflection.
Level 4: Expert – Shapes culture at scale. Develops emerging leaders. Aligns how the function grows with how the org evolves.
Reflection prompts:
How have you helped someone grow in their role?
What kind of culture do you intentionally shape?
When have you influenced a team beyond your direct scope?
Assessing Current Skills
Once you understand the competencies and levels, the next step is putting them to work. Whether you’re supporting an individual Product Ops professional or evaluating an entire team, the goal of this model isn’t just classification it’s conversation. It’s a tool to help you understand what someone is great at today, where they want to grow, and how the team or org can support that growth.
Why Assessment Matters
Most product orgs evaluate performance with vague statements like “doing great” or “could improve communication.” This model gives you something sharper: a common language. It helps you move beyond generalities to specific behaviors that can be observed, supported, and coached.
It’s not about scoring people. It’s about creating clarity. If your team uses numeric scores, make sure they’re paired with examples and used to reflect observable behavior not potential or worth.
How to Use It
You can use this assessment process in a few key ways:
Self-assessment – Individuals rate themselves across the eight competency areas using the level definitions. They should give examples, highlight recent wins, and reflect honestly.
Prompts to get started:
What’s something in this area you’ve done that made a measurable difference?
Where do you feel stretched or stuck?
Which competencies energize you most right now?
Manager assessment – Managers rate their team members separately using the same scale. They should also provide concrete examples and observations.
Compare and align – The real value comes from the conversation. Sit down together, review where perspectives match or differ, and talk about what growth looks like next.
You can do this during onboarding, quarterly growth check-ins, or promotion preparation. Some teams use it at offsites to map collective strengths and gaps.
A Note on Mixed Levels
It’s normal, and expected, for people to show up at different levels across the competency areas. Someone might be Level 3 in Data and Level 1 in Leadership. That’s not a red flag, it’s a signal. It helps teams balance responsibilities, tailor coaching, and plan development more intentionally.
Team-Level Insight
If you assess an entire team, you can visualize capability across all eight competencies. This is especially helpful for:
Spotting over-dependence on one person
Identifying areas that need more coaching or support
Making a case for headcount by revealing gaps
You can visualize this in a matrix, radar chart, or simple heatmap whatever fits your team’s decision-making style. Even a simple heatmap can change the conversation from “Who’s doing what?” to “Where do we need to build strength?”
Real-World Applications
You don’t need to memorize this model to get value from it. You just need to know when to reach for it and how to use it in the moments that matter.
Here are five real-world ways teams are using the Product Operations Competency Model today:
1. Hiring: Build Better Job Descriptions and Screens
Use the competencies and proficiency levels to write job descriptions that reflect what the work actually requires. Instead of vague traits like “detail-oriented” or “collaborative,” highlight what the role looks like in context:
What level of process ownership is expected?
What kind of data fluency is essential?
Where will this person need to influence without authority?
Use the model to craft interview questions and identify signals to listen for. It can help align your hiring panel on what good looks like and what to look for.
2. Performance Reviews: Ground Growth in Reality
Tired of feedback like “keep up the good work” or “be more strategic”? Use the competency definitions to clarify expectations and name observable behaviors. It helps managers write clearer feedback and helps individuals self-reflect.
It also opens up conversations about where someone excels and where they’re ready to stretch without relying on gut feel.
3. Team Mapping: Spot Blind Spots and Overlap
When you assess a whole team, patterns emerge. You might realize one person is holding the tooling strategy together or that nobody is operating at Level 3+ in Change Management. This insight can:
Shape your next hire
Adjust scope and ownership
Identify where coaching is most needed
4. Career Planning: Support IC Growth and Transitions
Use the model with team members to help them:
Understand what growth looks like
Identify where they’re strongest
Explore what’s next in their path
Whether they want to deepen expertise as an IC or grow toward people leadership, this model gives shape to the conversation.
5. Cross-Functional Education: Explain What Product Ops Actually Does
This model is also a powerful way to educate partners across Product, Design, Engineering, and beyond. Instead of listing your responsibilities, show them the competencies. It gives visibility to the scope of the role and builds shared respect for the work.
You don’t need to use all five applications at once. Start where the tension is highest or the clarity is lowest. Even a single well-timed conversation using this model can reshape expectations, reduce confusion, and unlock growth.
Adapting the Model
No model fits every team out of the box. That’s by design. This one is built to stretch.
Whether you’re running Product Ops solo at a startup or leading a scaled team in a matrixed org, the core competencies will likely apply but how they show up may look different. This section offers guidance on how to adapt without diluting the model’s value.
When to Customize (and How to Do It Well)
You might want to tailor this model if:
Your team owns a specialized scope (e.g., experimentation, enablement)
You’re integrating Product Ops with adjacent functions like BizOps or Program Management
You want to reflect unique expectations at a specific proficiency level
Good customization doesn’t mean rewriting the entire model. It means:
Swapping in examples that match your org’s language
Highlighting the 2–3 most critical competencies for your context
Mapping levels to your org’s internal title or leveling framework
Applying the Model in Different Org Stages
Startups: Focus on the foundational and proficient levels. Use the model to guide scope discussions and prevent role sprawl.
Growth-stage orgs: Use it to clarify specialization (e.g., tools vs. insights), structure hiring, and guide internal education.
Scaled enterprises: Align it with existing performance frameworks and use it for team mapping, cross-functional clarity, and strategic planning.
How to Evolve It as Your Team Matures
Revisit the model regularly:
Are certain competencies becoming more critical?
Have any roles shifted in scope?
Is your language still accurate and clear?
This isn’t a static document. It should reflect the living, evolving nature of the Product Ops function.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
Don’t try to force every person to be Level 4 in everything
Don’t assume this replaces feedback or context it’s a tool, not a shortcut
Don’t skip the reflection and conversation part. That’s where the magic happens
Use this model as a foundation. Adjust it with care. And revisit it with intention as your team, product, and org evolves.
Start where the tension is highest or the clarity is lowest. Even a single well-timed conversation using this model can reshape expectations, reduce confusion, and unlock growth.
Tools & Templates
A model is only useful if you can put it to work. That’s why this one comes with a set of MVP tools to help you apply it whether you’re just getting started or scaling across a team.
These tools are designed to be flexible. You can use them out of the box or tailor them to match your org’s language and rhythm. Use them in Google Doc, copy them into Excel, or turn them into slides. They’re built to meet you where you work.
1. Competency Matrix & Team Radar Chart Template
A full view of all eight competencies and the four proficiency levels. Use it as a reference doc, career framework, or org-wide baseline. It also comes with a way to visualize team-wide strengths and gaps. Helpful for resourcing conversations, team planning, and identifying coaching needs.
2. Self & Manager Assessment Forms
Lightweight templates for structured self-reflection and manager feedback. Use them for growth planning, performance check-ins, or onboarding alignment.
3. Career Development Worksheet
A simple doc to help Product Ops professionals track where they are, where they want to grow, and how to get there.
4. Role Scoping Canvas
Clarify what a specific Product Ops role will focus on—by mapping which competencies matter most, and at what level. Perfect for job design and new headcount planning.
What Comes Next
If this model helped you see Product Ops more clearly, don’t let it sit.
Bring it into your next team conversation. Use it to shape a role, align a hire, plan a growth path. It’s built for real-world use whether you’re a team of one or leading a scaled function.
And if you want support bringing this to life in your org, I can help.
Whether you’re rolling it out with your team, adapting it to your unique context, or using it to spark career conversations, I offer hands-on help through:
Coaching for Product Ops professionals and leaders
Facilitated workshops to map team capability or align on role scope
Custom implementation support to integrate the model into hiring, performance, or leveling frameworks
If that’s something you’d like to explore, reach out. I’d love to hear what you’re building and how this can support it.
The function is still evolving. So are we. Let’s build it better, together.
-Mat 🤓
p.s.
This model is a living thing, so if you have suggestions on how to make it better please comment below!
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