by Gary Worthington, More Than Monkeys

Over the last few articles we’ve worked through what a Product Operating Model is, why organisations are shifting towards it, what the core elements look like, and how to apply them in practice. We’ve also looked at the challenges that derail many transformations, and why SMEs are often in a stronger position than enterprises to make the shift.

To finish the series, let’s look at some real-world examples and practical playbooks.

Case study: SaaS startup growing pains

A SaaS company I worked with had around a dozen engineers and a growing backlog of requests. Everything was handled like a project: sales would ask for a feature, the CEO would prioritise it, and the developers would jump on it. The problem was that nobody really owned outcomes. Conversions were stalling, customers were churning, and support was swamped.

We made a simple change. Instead of treating every request as a project, we defined three product areas: onboarding, billing, and the core product. We gave each a small, stable team, even if that meant just two or three people splitting their time. Budgets and metrics were tied to those product areas, not to individual projects.

It wasn’t a silver bullet. But within six months, onboarding conversion had improved and support tickets dropped noticeably. More importantly, the company had a structure that stopped the constant firefighting and gave them a way to grow without chaos.

Case study: SME services business

A mid-sized services firm had invested heavily in digital tools, but internally everything was still siloed. Marketing ran campaigns, sales used the CRM, operations delivered the service, and nobody looked at the end-to-end customer experience. IT was stuck in the middle, constantly blamed for “not delivering.”

We reframed the work around customer journeys: acquiring customers, delivering the service, and supporting them afterwards. Each became a “product,” with a small cross-functional group responsible for outcomes. The CEO stopped micromanaging individual feature requests and instead set outcome targets like shortening the sales cycle or improving retention.

The result wasn’t an overnight transformation, but the conversations changed. People stopped arguing about which department owned what system and started talking about customer outcomes. That shift in language alone improved focus and accountability.

Playbook: Product charters

A one-page product charter clarifies:

• The purpose of the product (customer problem or business outcome).
• Its boundaries (what it owns and doesn’t).
• The team responsible.
• The metrics that matter.

It doesn’t need to be polished. The point is clarity, not theatre.

Playbook: Outcome-based roadmaps

Swap out the “feature delivery plan” for an outcome-based roadmap. Instead of listing what you’ll ship in Q3, set out the problems you aim to solve and how you’ll measure success. The solutions can change as you learn. What matters is whether the outcome moves.

Playbook: Lightweight portfolio boards

In SMEs, a portfolio board can be as simple as the founders and product leads spending an hour once a month looking at outcomes and adjusting priorities. Keep it short, keep it sharp, and resist the urge to turn it into another ceremony.

Playbook: Metrics that matter

Avoid vanity dashboards. Pick two or three measures that cut to the heart of value. For example:

• Onboarding: trial-to-paid conversion, time to first value.
• Billing: failed payments, billing-related support tickets.
• Core product: churn, active usage.

These become the heartbeat of your product operating model.

Wrapping up the series

The Product Operating Model is often presented as a corporate transformation programme, complete with consultants and frameworks. It doesn’t have to be that complicated. At its core it’s about creating long-lived teams, funding them properly, giving them outcomes to aim for, and supporting them with the right leadership and culture.

Whether you’re a 10-person startup or a 10,000-person bank, the principles are the same. The difference is how much process you layer on top. SMEs can afford to keep it lightweight. Enterprises have more inertia to deal with, but the end goal is the same.

Get the basics right and you end up with an organisation that can adapt quickly, focus on what matters, and deliver products customers actually value.