Most startups aren’t built like rocketships that will make it to the proverbial moon.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing. It just means that what worked for a team when it was composed of five people won’t work as the company doubles or triples in size. So as new products and employees are added to a company’s roster, leaders need to pay close attention to how they’re evolving their team structures in order to support the business’s shifting needs.
That’s especially true of product teams, which function as the heartbeat of any company’s success. Juggling internal and external demands, as well as roadmapping new features and offerings can get overwhelming, even when everything is running smoothly.
So, how can product orgs best prepare for growth?
To find out, Built In Seattle talked to product leaders from Wyze and Ookla, two companies that have scaled significantly to hundreds of employees each. These leaders shared how their team structures have evolved, how they’re currently operating and what the future holds as their companies continue to grow.
How big is your product management team, and how is it structured?
Our product team currently has 21 members around the world, with plans to hire several more in the coming months. Our team structure generally mirrors our product portfolio of consumer and enterprise offerings, with each of our product and program managers typically supporting a suite of related products. Last year, we also established a training function to help internal stakeholders and end users better understand our products.
How has your team structure changed during the life of the company?
Like most startups, there was no formal product management function for Ookla’s first several years. Eventually, a few program managers joined to support product development activities. It wasn’t until four years ago that a product team was formally established and we started adopting more structured Scrum development methodologies. When I joined around that same time, there were only four of us on the team. The growth we’ve experienced since then has been truly incredible!
Our organization has continuously adapted to meet the challenges and opportunities that accompany such growth.”
Looking forward, at what point does the current structure break down at scale? What comes next?
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. I think our current approach of aligning our products and product teams around our primary customer personas and problem spaces will scale naturally. The biggest challenge I foresee is expanding our global presence so that we have better in-market representation and support for our increasingly diverse customer base.
How big is your product management team, and how is it structured?
We have more than 30 product managers, divided into two main teams: hardware devices, like our cameras and other physical products, and cloud services, like CamPlus. The hardware teams are broken up into categories by device type, and the services teams focus on a particular plan or tier. Additionally, the services teams have specialties around technologies such as artificial intelligence. The product managers on the artificial intelligence team work with our PhD AI researchers to come up with new features, like Wyze Smart Vision, which allows users to train their Wyze Cams to recognize anything.
How has that structure changed during the life of the company?
We started just four years ago with a single product manager for our original Wyze Cam v1 and have since added teams for new cameras, smart home devices — like plugs, bulbs and locks — and now services like CamPlus and CamPlus Pro. For hardware specifically, we have settled on teams that develop three Cs: cameras, control devices (like smart plugs) and comfort devices (like our Wyze thermostat).
We started just four years ago with a single product manager for our original Wyze Cam v1 and have since added teams for new cameras, smart home devices and services.”
Looking forward, at what point does the current structure break down at scale? What comes next?
We struggle the most when we have stakeholders located in different time zones. PMs can quickly exhaust themselves talking with customers in the U.S. during the day, and factory managers or component providers at night. It’s really hard to pay attention to the 2023 roadmap for your service organizational controls vendor when it’s midnight your time!
Recording Zoom calls for later playback is a real help, and we’re working quickly to get more laboratory and testing resources in Seattle. Now, when we need a specific functional test, we can get the results interactively and hands-on without waiting until the next day.
