The RevOps Workstreams Framework

Budgeting your time for maximum impact.

The biggest problem in revenue operations is finding the time to get it all done.

The sheer volume of requests, problems, opportunities, and expectations can be overwhelming. It's easy to feel like you're failing no matter how hard you work — that something is always slipping through the cracks.

Two common traps

I’ve observed two common challenges in how teams deal with this problem (and have fallen prey to both of them myself).

🫡 Working reactively

In working reactively, you aim to provide the best service you can and to be maximally responsive to your stakeholders.

• Jumping on the most recent notification in your inbox as soon as it arrives.

• Responding to Slack / chat notifications in real time.

• Always making yourself available.

The downside is that you lose all control of your time and make very little progress on your planned priorities.

Your stakeholders will generally feel positive about how helpful you are. But you also end up plagued with nagging guilt that key projects aren’t moving forward, and leadership will perceive you as lacking strategic acumen.

🙅 Working in a silo

This is the opposite extreme. You go heads down on your own priorities and respond slowly/infrequently to inbound requests.

You end up deep in “communication debt.”

While you will deliver on important priorities, the sentiment about your work will generally be negative among the teams you support. Stakeholders will become increasingly frustrated and complain that ops doesn't support them.

Also a lot of those requests ARE still important to the smooth operations of the business, even though in isolation they’ll never seem as impactful as the priorities you have planned. By ignoring them, you clog the gears of your own machine.

The solution: workstreams

Workstreams are simple in concept but powerful in practice.

Rather than trying to prioritize between dissimilar tasks, you recognize that your team has different streams of work that all get a certain “budget” of time.

Then you prioritize tasks within those workstreams.

Workstreams span functional areas and are more about the type of request. I also divide them between “run” activities (that relate to day-to-day operations) and “innovate” activities (that aim to change or improve the business).¹

Here are the five main workstreams we use on my team (yours may be different depending on the mission and scope of your RevOps team).

🎯 Campaign operations

Executing a discrete and time-bound marketing or sales initiative in our systems.

• Examples: email campaign, webinar, event list upload
• Run or Innovate: Run
• Intake: project management request form
• Time-frame: Execute per SLA

🤝 Support

Request for help with an existing process or system.

• Examples: wrong lead assignment, fix attribution, create ad-hoc report, bug fix
• Run or Innovate: Run
• Intake: project management request form
• Time-frame: MOPS team to assess urgency and act accordingly

🔄 Operating rhythm

Supporting the planning cycle and operating rhythm of a revenue team.

• Examples: target setting, incentives, staffing, etc.
• Run or Innovate: Run
• Intake: established cadence depending on the activity
• Time-frame: ongoing

💻 Products

Process and system configuration to support our business needs. Products are continually created and developed with new features.

• Examples: new routing scenario, new program template, new dashboard
• Run or Innovate: Innovate
• Intake: project management request form OR MOPS planning process
• Time-frame: opportunistic (low effort + high impact) = immediately; strategic (higher effort + high impact) = prioritize in roadmap

💰 Performance

Analysis and initiatives to improve the business performance of the marketing team.

• Examples: optimizing lead management process, improving a follow-up cadence, identifying channels to increase/decrease investment
• Run or Innovate: Innovate
• Intake: project management request form OR MOPS planning process
• Time-frame: opportunistic = immediately; strategic = prioritize in roadmap

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Here are the workstreams summarized in a table format that you can copy and customize for your own needs:

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Using workstreams to budget your time

With workstreams in mind, you can make intelligent decisions about how to budget your time.

For example, you may agree with your stakeholders that RevOps time will be budgeted as follows:

• Campaign operations: 30%

• Support: 15%

• Operating Rhythm: 15%

• Products: 20%

• Performance: 20%

However, this ratio may be different for different team members.

Campaign Operations Specialist

• Campaign operations: 60%

• Support: 30%

• Operating Rhythm: 0%

• Products: 0%

• Performance: 10%

Platform Operations Manager

• Campaign operations: 0%

• Support: 20%

• Operating Rhythm: 0%

• Products: 80%

• Performance: 0%

Sales Operations Analyst

• Campaign operations: 0%

• Support: 30%

• Operating Rhythm: 30%

• Products: 0%

• Performance: 40%

Summary

I find this framework gives a lot of clarity. You can better control your work, assess true capacity, and funnel tasks into specific workflows depending on what they are.

Life will never be easy in ops, but I find this framework ensures a good balance of high-impact strategic work and daily stakeholder support.

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1. Stole this paradigm from my friend Paul Wilson, although he calls it “run the business” and “change the business.”