Talking Roadmaps Should Product Operations be involved in roadmapping? | Valentina Thörner
Nov 21, 2025
Valentina Thörner, Head of Product Operations at ZF, shares her expertise in product management and operations. She discusses the necessity of product operations as teams grow, emphasizing goals like improving data quality and enhancing collaboration. Valentina also tackles challenges in cross-functional communication, the significance of templates for remote work, and best practices for visibility. Additionally, she highlights the importance of hiring at the right time and the human touch in remote work, advocating for in-person interactions to boost team dynamics.
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How Valentina Structured Her Product Ops Team
- Valentina built a team with a program manager, an engineering liaison, and a marketing/go-to-market partner.
- Each role focused on incoming insights, engineering needs, and go-to-market translation respectively.
Async Writing Replaces Meetings At Scale
- Async written communication becomes essential as teams scale and timezones diverge.
- This shift creates translation problems that require templates and clearer documentation.
Use Templates To Bridge Cultural Differences
- Provide templates to help diverse cultural and experience backgrounds produce legible, comparable outputs.
- Use templates to shortcut repetitive alignment conversations and surface rationale quickly.