To put it concisely, a product team is a group of people working together for the same goal of developing any product. A product team generally consists of Product Managers and Developers. Product Managers can further be classified as business Product Managers, Technical Product Managers, Design Product Managers, etc., as per the needs of the company.
Certified Scrum Product Owner Certification has proven to be a great initiative to make great Product Managers. CSPO Certification helps individuals to develop and improve skills regarding Project Management.
Types of product team structures:
- Assigning Product Managers according to the product
- Assigning Product Managers according to the skills
- Keeping the product team small
Tips for structuring a product team:
- Direct customer insight: A direct contact between the Product Manager and the customers helps maintain a good relationship. The Product Manager well understands the needs and demands of the customers. This type of structure helps to avoid an extra step of requirement sharing with market-facing Product Managers.
- Ownership: A good product team structure should be such that it gives clear ownership of products, features, and segments. A small, empowered, and motivated team is always better than large and chaotic teams.
- Parallel roles: The basic job of every Product Manager must be the same. They should just be working on different products or features. In this way, other members of the organization can work comfortably with different Product Managers.
- Scalability: After a while, when the organization grows, the structure of the product team should be such that it only needs to add Product Managers without changing the organizational structure.
- Durability: Product teams must be stable because working with people you are comfortable with always yields better results. Trust develops over time. Therefore, the durability of team members is necessary.
- Cohesive: Product team structure should be cohesive, which means related things must be grouped. This will increase the working efficiency of the teams.
- Diversity: Diversity in thoughts, ideas, working patterns, creativity, and experience will always help achieve better results. Therefore, a team with diverse members will always have better results.
- Loose coupling: There has to be a proper system of communicating things with other teams. Not all the members of a single team should be allowed to convey matters to other teams.
- Cognitive load: Cognitive load on team members should not be high. A stress-free mind is more innovative.
- Roles and duties: Roles and duties of the team members must be defined, well explained, and specific for different individuals beforehand. This will help in removing any sort of misunderstanding.
- Team Topology: Team topology means the different types of teams in an organization should be such that each team helps one another. Stream aligned team, platform team, complicated subsystem team, and enabling team are examples.
- Problem-solving attitude: Team members should always look for solutions rather than discussing the problem too much. Team members should always focus on “what can be done to solve the problem.”
- Appreciation favors motivation: Appreciating the members for all the efforts they put into the work will motivate them to work better. Therefore, it becomes very necessary to appreciate the efforts of the team members.
- Working environment: A comfortable working environment will increase the efficiency of work by the team. People will be able to think and act more wisely. A good working environment includes proper lighting, suitable room temperature, comfortable seats, and desks.
- Dedication: To develop any product worth accepting by the customers, a lot of dedication by the team members is required during the development of the product.
- Evaluation: Evaluation can be considered the most crucial part of structuring the product team. Evaluation does not have to occur only at the end of the product development process but throughout the process. One needs to keep an account of how things are going and whether or not things are going as planned. Evaluation helps in improving the process wherever required.
For a product team to be efficient, it requires a well-structured organization. One can also choose individuals who have attended CSPO courses. These courses help individuals become incredible product owners by letting them understand their rights and duties. Therefore, you can check for Certified Scrum Product Owner Certification during the selection of product owners. Other than that, it becomes very important to follow the other tips mentioned above while structuring a product team.