<!-- Product operations charter · from Chapter 28 of The Product 360 Handbook -->

# Product operations charter · [Portfolio or organization] · v[n] · [Date]

**Sponsor:** [Product leader]   **Product ops lead:** [Name]   **Review date:** [Date, at least annually]

## Mission
One sentence: Product operations makes it faster and safer for [product teams] to make evidence-based decisions by [how].

## Customers of product ops
| Customer | What they need from us | How we'll know it works |
|---|---|---|
| PMs and designers | | |
| Product leaders | | |
| Field (sales, CS, support, partners) | | |
| Finance | | |

## Scope by pillar
| Pillar | We do | We do not |
|---|---|---|
| Business and data insights | Own the metric glossary and one source of truth; provide self-serve dashboards; publish the monthly AI quality and cost report | Do teams' analysis for them |
| Customer and market insights | Run the feedback repository and its tagging; maintain the research panel; publish the monthly voice-of-the-customer readout | Run teams' discovery or interviews for them |
| Process and governance | Publish the cadence and planning calendars; prep and record rituals; maintain the decision-rights register, templates and skills; onboard PMs | Make product decisions; own the roadmap; add process that no decision needs |

## Services and response times
| Service | Request route | Response time |
|---|---|---|
| New metric or definition change | | [e.g. decision within 2 weeks] |
| Access to a tool or connector | | |
| Ad hoc data question | | [self-serve first; escalation within N days] |
| New template or skill | | |

## Owned artifacts
- Metric glossary
- Operating cadence calendar
- Planning calendar with annual overlay
- Decision-rights register
- Tool stack map
- Template and skill library
- PM onboarding kit

## Decision rights of product ops itself
Product ops decides: [tool selection within budget, template formats, calendar dates, connector access defaults].
Product ops recommends, a product leader decides: [new rituals, new required steps, tool purchases above threshold].
Product ops never decides: roadmap content, priorities, pricing, customer commitments.

## Measures (baseline and target)
| Measure | Baseline | Target | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Insight latency | | | |
| Metric disputes per quarter | | | |
| Ritual decision yield | | | |
| New PM time to first logged decision | | | |

## Process budget
Every new ritual, template or required step names the decision it improves. Each review, we retire at least one thing that no longer does.