In a recent LinkedIn post, Melissa Perri discusses a common pitfall that leads to the stagnation of many Product Operations (Product Ops) functions: their initial focus on dashboards rather than on critical decision-making gaps.
As Melissa Perri highlights, the typical trajectory for a Product Ops team often begins with a mandate to establish reporting. However, this can lead to a situation where extensive dashboards are created, yet they fail to influence any actual improvements in decision-making.
“Most product ops functions start with dashboards. That’s why most product ops functions stall.”
The Flaw in the Dashboard-First Approach
Melissa Perri argues that this dashboard-centric approach is fundamentally misguided. The core issue, according to Perri, is not a lack of data visibility but rather the inability to make crucial decisions due to missing or insufficient data. She points to unresolved roadmap debates and unanswered critical customer questions as prime examples of these decision-making bottlenecks.
“The team gets the mandate, looks at the to-do list, and the first thing on it is some version of ‘build out reporting.’ Six months later there are twelve dashboards on the wall and nobody can point to a single decision that got better because of them,” Perri elaborates in her post.
Reorienting Product Ops: From Decisions Backwards
Perri advocates for a reorientation of Product Ops strategy, emphasizing that true effectiveness stems from identifying and addressing the most pressing unresolved decisions within an organization. This involves pinpointing the strategic questions that leaders and product managers currently struggle to answer.
“Real product ops doesn’t start with the data source. It starts with the decision nobody can make right now. The customer question your PMs can’t answer. The roadmap argument leadership has every quarter without resolution because the data isn’t there,” Perri states.
A 90-Day Framework for Impact
According to Melissa Perri, the most successful Product Ops teams, within their first 90 days, focus on identifying two to three key strategic questions that the organization is ill-equipped to answer. All subsequent efforts—including tooling, dashboard development, and even team structuring—should be built backward from these identified decision gaps.
“In the first 90 days, the strongest product ops teams I see identify two or three strategic questions the org can’t currently answer, and they build everything backwards from those. Tooling follows. Dashboards follow. Even the team structure follows.”
Perri suggests that by prioritizing the resolution of these critical decision-making challenges, Product Ops can demonstrate tangible value and avoid the common fate of becoming a mere reporting function. She concludes by posing a critical question to her audience: “What’s the most expensive question your org is making decisions on right now without good data?”
For those looking to delve deeper into this strategic approach, Perri also mentions an upcoming Product Ops 101 workshop led by Denise Tilles.
📝 About This Content
This article is based on insights shared by Melissa Perri on LinkedIn.
📅 Originally posted on May 21, 2026 | View original post on LinkedIn →