Variety is the key to effective product management.
As a company grows, and its product team along with it, the structure of a PM org can play a significant role in what products look like and how customer challenges are solved. The five Seattle product leaders below said variety in their product team roster helps them recognize success both for the business and their team members.
Variation within the product department means different things for different businesses. For some, it means having a team of PMs with diverse skill sets: some with technical knowledge, others with UX skills or marketing savvy. For other product teams, having PMs with a range of expertise in specific verticals may be important. Some teams even house dedicated UX and content professionals under the product umbrella.
No matter the exact structure of their orgs, these leaders place a high value on empowering their product pros to feel a real sense of ownership.
DomainTools VP of Product Jackie Abrams said product team members are assigned to different areas of the product ecosystem to optimize how the platform is managed. Some managers are dedicated to specific use cases and customer needs at the cybersecurity threat intelligence platform, while others tend to DomainTools’ internal system on a more general level.
DomainTools’ product team structure: Our product team has both vertical and horizontal product managers. Vertical managers serve specific use cases, and horizontal managers provide underlying data or modular capability components that can be incorporated into each of our distinct product use cases. This structure enables us to give constant attention to the elements of our underlying data and systems that support all of our products. It also allows us to deliver experiences through each of our use-case-focused products that reflect and serve our customers’ needs.
We have feature-focused product managers who constantly look to improve customer experiences.”
How the product team structure has evolved: Originally, our PM team only had individual product managers that worked on products with disparate code bases. As we modernized our systems and underlying platform architecture, we wanted to reimagine the department to better enable a holistic, consistent approach to bringing products to customers.
We recently expanded the team with additional product managers to better support our bifurcated horizontal and vertical frameworks. Now we have feature-focused product managers who constantly look to improve customer experiences and deliverables, as well as platform- and system-focused PMs who ensure a strong, consistent framework for delivery across all of our products.
Most important consideration when growing the team: While technical knowledge is important for our data- and system-focused product managers, strong product management and documentation skills are essential for all our PMs. But, there are some things that are innate qualities that most likely won’t be learned over time and are critical for success, like general curiosity and a thirst for knowledge. Industry knowledge or technologies can be taught, and bridging that knowledge gap is easier for PMs, product marketers or other team members who are passionate about learning. Teamwork and collaboration are also crucial for success, and I find there’s little room for ego, pride or territorial conflict.
Change in the face of growth is often a good thing. Larry Colagiovanni said the product team structure at Limeade — an employee experience software company— changed to create more overall alignment. The CTO said putting the content team under the product umbrella with PMs and UX pros improved the company’s product strategy.
Limeade’s product team structure: Our product org is currently made up of three teams: product management, content and UX, which incorporates design and user research. It’s important to us that each of those teams has a seat at the table when it comes to shaping the future of the Limeade employee experience platform. Each makes decisions on whether something meets our bar to ship to users, asks questions about the performance of a feature once it’s live and fleshes out our processes to build products. They bring unique perspectives to discussions, and we love the healthy tension that comes with their points of view on how we solve problems.
Content plays such a critical role in our product experience that we ended up moving them to product.”
How the product team structure has evolved: There are two major changes we made to our product team in the last six months. First, the content team used to sit within marketing, given some synergies with the storytelling and education they deliver to the market at large. But content plays such a critical role in our product experience that we ended up moving them to product to help drive alignment and to ensure their point of view was more strongly included in the product strategy.
Our product managers also used to act as scrum masters for their teams and we shifted toward having dedicated project managers. It’s critical that our product managers spend time doing market and customer research and opportunity analysis. But in reality, they were spending the vast majority of their time managing projects and dealing with issues there. Introducing dedicated project managers took some of that burden off of them so they could spend more time getting closer to our customers and their needs, and helping us build better products.
Most important consideration when growing the team: During the interview loop, each interviewer focuses on at least one of our values. They are looking for how the candidate will do the following: embrace diversity in backgrounds, beliefs and perspectives; actively listen; collaborate; demonstrate humility; take risks and learn from mistakes.
While looking for certain skills or domain expertise is important, we focus on our values instead because we have an environment where we encourage people to try out new roles at the company. We have had developers join the product team, customer success managers join the people team and a UX researcher that now designs.
The product org at Ookla — an internet intelligence and testing application provider — keeps its teams small to drive collaboration and skills development. VP of Product Travis Wright said smaller teams empower product pros with more agency, freedom to work across departments and opportunities to advance their individual skills.
Ookla’s product team structure: While Ookla is best known for our consumer products, we also have a portfolio of enterprise products serving customers in a wide range of industries. Our current product management team structure reflects that portfolio, with individuals and smaller teams owning groups of related products. The product team works hand in hand with our software development scrum teams, as well as our data science and marketing teams, to bring new products and enhancements to market. This arrangement allows individuals to focus on their domains while also creating an atmosphere for collaboration in pursuit of shared goals.
The goal is to create the conditions for professional growth while ensuring the success of our products.”
How the product team structure has evolved: As our portfolio has evolved through product development and acquisitions, our organization has continuously adapted to meet the challenges and opportunities that accompany such growth. Whether adding new roles with different skill sets or finding new alignments within the team, the goal is to create conditions for professional growth while ensuring the success of our products and the customers we serve.
Most important consideration when growing the team: Our product team includes product directors and managers, program managers and soon, a product trainer with varying degrees of professional experience, technical skill and domain expertise. While there are different functional requirements to be successful in each role, we all share common traits that help us work well together: intellectual curiosity, versatility, a passion for excellence and patience. We understand there is no perfect path to any job and we believe diversity of all kinds makes us better. These ideas guide every hiring decision and serve us well.
Raina Christlieb, Expedia Group’s senior director of product management, values product teams with well-rounded skill sets. Through almost nine years at the online travel booking company, Christlieb said she learned that some of the most effective PM orgs have team members with a wide variety of expertise levels, which enables the team to solve challenges of all kinds.
Expedia Group’s product team structure: In my time at Expedia Group, I’ve been on and managed a few different product teams. Depending on the type of product, it has been great to have a balance of PMs with technical, UX, strategy, marketing and business skills. I find that having a blend of strengths throughout the team is important to delivering high-quality products and lifting skills across the board.
Our PMs will need to wear the consumer, developer and partner hats.”
How this product structure will evolve in the future: As we continue to build out the Expedia Group platform, it will be important for our product team to think platform-first and consider our entire customer base. Rather than just building out the capabilities needed to best serve our customers, we also need to consider how other partners, internal and external, may want to extend those capabilities on top of our platform. Our PMs will need to wear the consumer, developer and partner hats when it comes to supporting customer needs.
Most important consideration when growing the team: It depends on the type of product and the existing structure and skills within the team. The most important consideration can vary from role to role, and I believe the most effective teams have a balance. For highly technical products, we need folks who can understand the technical intricacies and what certain technical decisions will mean for the longer-term extension of the product. Overall, I look for team members who can bring strong core product management skills, have a growth mindset and are able to pivot their focus depending on the product needs and direction.
Vertical, industry-driven expertise is an important part of how the product team at customer acquisition tech company MediaAlpha is structured. VP of Product Management Robert Perine said focused expert knowledge offers PM team members a greater sense of ownership in their roles.
MediaAlpha’s product team structure: Our product team is primarily vertically oriented. For example, we have dedicated leads for auto insurance and for health insurance. We believe that it’s critical for each one of us to develop a deep understanding of the verticals and partners we serve. This structure also allows us to align product and business objectives and gives our team members a real sense of ownership.
It’s critical for each one of us to develop a deep understanding of the verticals and partners we serve.”
How this product structure will evolve in the future: Our team structure will continue to evolve by bringing in more specialists to support the vertical leads. We are actively hiring data science experts to enhance our predictive analytics and anomaly detection capabilities. These functional leads will continuously improve our infrastructure and platform while our vertical leads will identify new applications and strategic opportunities to deliver more value to our partners.
Most important consideration when growing the team: Each role requires a unique set of skills, but the most important thing we look for is a culture fit, as we strive to be curious, humble and candid. We have high standards and will only bring on team members that share our core values.
