Made in Humane Club
The Product Organization
The product organization acts as the central nervous system of the company.
The product organization within your company is a decision-making institution that is focused on identifying, digesting, and simplifying complexity so that it can optimize, if not amplify, the business impact of all other teams — Technology, Editorial, Data Science — using experiment-driven development.
When do you require a product team
“Have you ever felt that nothing is really moving? Nobody knows the answer to this question. Everyone is working hard. You see people everywhere slogging diligently. But nothing is moving. No one has any answers.”
Invest in a product team when your value creators can’t deliver value to customers.
Shipping Problem: As the company becomes a behemoth, the complexity grows to a level… where you start feeling that nothing is moving
Shaping Problem: You’ve business goals or problems to solve but aren’t sure what is the best options (ideas) to consider.
How does a product team help
Its job is to provide clarity, coherence, and direction to cross-functional teams so everyone is working towards growing specific business metrics.
- The product organization keeps everyone synced to shape, ship, and track the product.
- They are responsible for saying NO so most accidental complexity can be removed.
Frederick P. Brooks from No Silver Bullet, 1986
“I believe the hard part of building software to be the specification, design, and testing of this conceptual construct, not the labor of representing it and testing the fidelity of the representation. We still make syntax errors, to be sure; but they are fuzz compared with the conceptual errors in most systems.”
How should you structure your product team
To staff the product organization, you’ll need to hire: Chief Product Officer, Product Manager, Program Manager, Product Analytics Manager, and Product Owner.
- A common response is that my organization doesn’t have these roles!
- However, it is unlikely. Someone is performing these tasks, even if they are called something else. Without these functions, a modern technology operation cannot survive.
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