As a software product evolves from an early stage disruption in to a more sophisticated application, and potentially a full-blown platform, operations capabilities need to mature alongside the product.

In the early days of a product, deep knowledge of how the product works will be embedded in the minds of the product's creators. These are the Engineers, Architects and Product Managers making the day-to-day, detailed decisions about how the product is going to work. In the early days of a products life, these same people are working on support and sales.

As a product matures, items like support and sales will transition in to more formal programs in which the detailed knowledge of how the product operates has to be transitioned from its creators to these 3rd party groups.

In my experience, for sales and technical sales this process is most often called "Enablement" and led by marketing. For support/operations this process is most often captured in "Knowedge Transfer" and conforms to a process determined by Ops leadership.

As products move across different phases of maturity, I've found the transitions for sales and support can be rocky. Many times these transitions happen without thoughtful and purposeful planning, but instead as the result of customer requirements, executive change, Sev 1 customer events or large, lost deals.

Think about the operations group which can't train itself well enough because it does not have the right lab, or because the software is not documented completely. Even if the group wanted to improve its KPIs, it can't because it lacks the fundamental information to be able to do so. The natural result of an improperly trained operations group is escalation to the product's creators - Engineering, Architecture and Product.

To best understand what is necessary for support and operations, my recipe has always been one of trying to understand what is needed in order to support customers with the appropriate levels of quality. The most rigorous groups I've worked with have extreme service levels - the systems are so critical they operate with military precision in order to ensure systems continue running. These kinds of groups need to know everything about how a system works, down to the smallest detail.

Other systems may not have rigorous operating requirements. People won't die or millions of dollars won't be lost if these systems go down. In these cases the need for documentation and training can be much lower.

How do you determine what is right? Look at the agreements made with your customers - typically they will have service levels defined. If you have service levels which talk about minutes or hours, then it is very likely you have extreme operating requirements and the products you build will need to have significant documentation and training programs. You will manage thousands of pages of information and spend weeks building detailed training courses to properly transfer knowledge in to support and operations.

Enablement is an entirely different experience from Support and Ops. I generally think of 3 different areas:

1. Marketing - enablement of marketing staff is usually focused on demand generation and branding. This is the highest-level, most pure information about your product. Be warned: just because it is high-level, does not mean it is easy. The best marketing people will spend hours refining and working with product to determine the best messaging and story. I'm often reminded of a Mark Twain quote: "If I would have had more time, I would have written less."

2. Sales - sales generally requires the information about your product developed with marketing and having that information applied in to competitive sales situations. In software and hardware, this is often heavily focused on feature and function. Sales generally needs significant context to be properly enabled - they need to know detailed information about competitors as well as your own products.

3. Technical Sales - this group is often the most difficult to properly enable. They need much of the information you would give to both Support/Ops and to Sales, but with a heavy focus on influencing other technologists. Many people employed in technical sales roles are very strong technologists - their job is winning the technical sale, so they are highly motivated to deeply understand the way a technology works. If your company does not have technical marketing staff, properly training this group can be extremely difficult.