How you structure your product development team will absolutely make or break your product. The stakes literally couldn't be higher.
21% of products fail to meet customers’ needs, meaning that 4 out of 5 businesses spend hundreds of thousands of dollars developing products that will never succeed. No one wants to fall into the dangers of that statistic. Companies hire the right resources, all in the hopes of creating a sticky product in an agile way.
But your team structure isn’t just about who you hire. It comes down to how you manage them, the expectations you set, and the way you manage success.
We’ve built over one hundred SaaS products for startups, established enterprises, and government organizations. We have found our method of success.
In this guide, we discuss what product development teams are and the different types of team structures that have worked for many companies. That way you can get a sense of what's available to try. But once that groundwork is laid, we dive into the structure that has worked for us and share everything we’ve learned about creating a high-performing product team structure.
What is a product team?
A product development team is a multi-discipline, multi-functional group of experts organized for the purpose of successful product development. These teams typically consist of strategists, managers, developers, designers, engineers, and analysts (more on this later). Sometimes they also include marketers as well.
What does a product team do?
Through cross-functional collaboration, product teams design, develop, launch, and support a product through its lifecycle. These are typically led by a product manager (PM) or a technical product manager (TPM) who guides the team through the chosen product development framework.
It is important to note that a product manager is not the same as a project manager.
Distinguishing between product management and project management
One of the biggest pitfalls in product development is to consider the product as a project. Before you approach building your product team, It is imperative that you understand the difference.
Product Management - A strategic function focused on guiding a product through its lifecycle. A product manager identifies customer needs, defines the product vision, and collaborates with cross-functional teams to develop and launch the product. They prioritize features, create roadmaps, and ensure that the product aligns with market demands and business goals. For product managers, decisions are made based on data and feedback and the objective to drive growth.
Project Management - A tactical function centered on the execution and delivery of specific projects within a set timeframe and budget. A project manager plans, organizes, and manages resources to achieve project goals. Their focus is on coordinating teams, tracking progress, and mitigating risks associated with project completion. Their success is measured by the efficient and successful completion of the project.
What's important about this distinction is that with product development you can’t jump straight into the roles, tools, and collaboration processes. To do so would be to focus too heavily on project management.
The macro- and micro-team structures
There is no single right solution to product development team structure. There are, however, common structures that have been proven in the past to be successful. These structures we like to call macro-team structures as they lay the framework of the team-product interaction.
Then there is the micro-team structure. These micro-teams formulate the core functionalities that every team must cover, regardless of the chosen framework.
Common macro-team structures
Deciding on the macro-team structure is very case specific. And it can (and probably will) change with time. Organization might be product based or center on a functional area of support.
Different product team structures include:
Structured by cross-functional collaboration: As the name suggests, this team structure consists of a group of experts that can initiate and deliver product motions independently. This is the structure we follow at DevSquad with continued proven success. Below, we’ll take a look in more detail at how we structure each and every product team (what we call DevSquads).
Structured by product: This is a common method of team structuring. Here the team is led by a product manager and organized to deliver and maintain a specific product. The team is responsible for market research, product roadmapping, addressing customer feedback, and building new features and functionality.
Structured by product feature: When an organization has a suite of products that are compiled into complex packages, creating development teams around features can be the right option. In this instance the team's focus is on a discrete focus area and its cohesion through the company's product organization.
Structured by customer segment: The aim of the team structure is to focus on specific user segments. The team develops an intimate understanding of their user segment and develops solutions tailored towards them. This produces very customer-centric solutions and is a good choice for companies that serve a broad range of industries or markets.
Structured by product managers’ skills: This approach utilizes multiple product managers with distinct skill sets and expertise. Each manager is responsible for their specific product segment—such as growth, data or design—across multiple products.
Structured by performance metrics: Under this structure, each team is assigned a set of key performance indicators (KPIs). Their objective is to improve those metrics across all product features. This structure method is most often seen in companies with mature products that have established KPIs to target.
Structured by customer journey stage: This is another customer-centric approach. Here teams take ownership of particular stages of the customer journey. The objective is to enhance the customer experience at each stage from product introduction and adoption to continued use and expansion.
The micro-team structure
From our experience, every product development team needs 3 micro-teams: your strategy team (focused on business strategy and market needs), your design team (focused on identifying and satisfying user expectations), and your engineering team (focused on launching validated ideas quickly).
Without these 3 micro-teams, you run the risk of hiring a bunch of yes men who build a bloated product.
Before we dive into how we structure our development teams, let’s take a closer look at these 3 functions. Because these 3 functions can exist within the different macro-team structures, not just the one we go by and recommend. The point is that no matter how you structure your team, you must cover all of these 3 areas.
Strategy - You need to be sure that you’re building something that users need and that you’re solving their most pressing problems.
Design - Digital products need clean, modern, easy-to-understand UX design so that users can easily achieve their desired outcomes.
Engineering - You need engineering expertise to bring the strategy and design to life. For most digital products, Laravel and Vue.js are a winning combination.
Every team is different depending on the size of the organization and the budget, but make sure you have those 3 areas covered.
6 essential product development team roles
At DevSquad we strongly believe in the cross-functional collaboration team structure. This belief comes from the experience of building over one hundred SaaS products.
The effectiveness and success we have observed continues to solidify our resolve in this approach. So, if you want to get your product right the first time consider using our proven structure.
That proven organizational structure consists of 6 essential product team roles:
Product strategists
Technical product manager
Developers
UX designers
DevOps engineers
QA analysts
1. Product strategists
Most people know that they need a product manager (PM), but what about a product strategist? While all PMs do offer strategy, you still need a dedicated product strategist. PMs are closer to the development team and designers. Whereas product strategists are closer to the stakeholders, finance team, competitive knowledge, and overall market. In turn this supports an outward looking perspective that keeps the product aligned with more than the direct development process.
Responsibilities:
Facilitate strategy workshops
Collect product ideas from various stakeholders
Conduct or delegate user and market research
Assess product ideas
Advise on the requirements for version 1 of the product
Share experience from previous development projects
Advise on tools, technologies, and frameworks
Advise on necessary team hires
If you’re an entrepreneur, you might serve as the product strategist because you know the most about the market you’re targeting. However, make sure to also get the help of an external (third-party) strategist who’s experienced in building digital products. They’ll be able to help you whittle down ideas and approach development more affordably.
2. Technical product manager
We recommend that instead of hiring a general product manager, that you hire a technical product manager. Typically, this is a person with previous software engineering and development experience. This allows TPMs to bring a more technical perspective to management, explain the technical side of a product to non-technical team members, and provide technical alternatives to the stakeholders. This offers a huge advantage, especially to non-technical founders and business leaders. You need your PM to be able to manage every aspect of development, and they can’t do that without a strong technical background.
Responsibilities:
Serve as product owner
Communicate with all other roles of the development team
Own team backlog
Manage user research and user testing
Help validate product ideas and prototypes
Delegate development
Plan product and feature releases
Manage product and feature launch communication
3. Developers
Developers are the workhorse that gets the product built. They are the creators and refiners that carry a concept from design through to production.
Responsibilities (varies widely based on whether they are backend, frontend, or full stack):
Discuss and analyze user requirements
Produce clean efficient code
Review the code of other developers on the team
Communicate with the product manager daily
Troubleshoot, debug, and maintain software
Assess and implement product feedback
Develop technical documentation for the product
Note: If you have more than two developers on your team, you might want to promote one of them to tech lead. Your tech lead will serve as the point person between your developers and your DevOps engineers and QA testers.
4. UX designers
Every product development team needs at least one killer UX designer. At this stage in the evolution of software development, users expect an awesome UX experience. Without great UX, your product will undoubtedly fail. Your designer should be experienced in writing user stories and creating user flows that are simple and effective. They should be obsessed with great design and produce clean, modern interfaces. They should also be experienced with the reiterating on their design over time. UX must be continuously optimized to achieve business initiatives, such as higher conversion rates and activation rates or lower churn. A great UX designer is humble enough to know this.
Responsibilities:
Conduct UX audits of the current products and competitor products
Create user personas to clarify user needs
Write user stories to showcase how users will achieve their goals with the product
Create low-fidelity and high-fidelity prototypes
Update prototypes based on feedback from users and stakeholders
Create UX designs for frontend developers to implement
Come up with A/B tests for UX design to improve onboarding and retention
5. DevOps engineers
Your DevOps engineer is the quarterback of the team. They make system releases possible. If you’re tooling is outdated or if you don’t have a DevOps pro on your team, it will take months instead of days to deploy ready-to-release code. DevOps engineers not only make continuous deployment possible, but they also recommend and implement cybersecurity, system performance, and data architecture enhancements.
Responsibilities:
Implement engineering, CI/CD, and automation tools
Review and validate code submitted from developers
Troubleshoot and fix bugs
Test system performance and scalability
Build automated processes and help improve team efficiency
Build a continuous deployment pipeline
Measure DevOps and development KPIs
Report on development releases and system functionality
Run penetration tests and assess system vulnerabilities
Deploy cybersecurity measures
Maintain and recommend improvements to data architecture
6. QA analysts
QA analysts are experienced professionals who can take charge of quality assurance (unlike QA testers, who typically need a QA manager to delegate tasks to them). A QA analyst will be able to run all necessary tasks and interface with the developers on the team.
Responsibilities:
Write test cases to cover the product
Execute on test cases
Use exploratory testing to play with the app freely as a user would
Write and implement automated test scripts for core functionality
Write issue reports and reproduction steps
Test using a variety of devices, network connectivity, battery life, operating systems, and web browsers
Test multilanguage and accessibility elements
Retest functionality as requested by developers and DevOps
5 secrets to running a high-performing team
Having the right people on your team isn’t enough. You need to know how to manage them and get them working together. Achieving this is easier said than done. It takes time, practice, and the willingness to try. Of course mistakes will be made. But these are the moments you can learn the most from.
Learning from others is also a plus. Here are some of the tricks we have learned for running a high-performing team.
1. Use playbooks to get up and running faster
The Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing Framework describes the 4 stages that a new team goes through when they start working together.
Under this framework there are really two places to start. The first (and best option) is to hire a product team that is already experienced in working together. Their working dynamic will have gotten them through the first three stages and you can kickstart at the “Performing” level. The second best thing is to build a team yourself from scratch. Finding a built team without the experience of working together is not recommended.
If you decide to go on the “build your team from scratch” route, use playbooks from expert development teams to help you progress through these 4 phases faster.
Seek out advice on:
Hiring for the right roles
Knowing what questions to ask during interviews
Providing technical tests
Delegating tasks
Coordinating resources
Deploying continuously
DevSquad offers a done-with-you service where we give you all of the playbooks you need to learn how to hire the right people and get them working together. We want you to succeed and provide this alternative for entrepreneurs who can’t afford our fully managed dev team but want to avoid the risks of managing development with no guidance.
2. Use dual-track agile development
Of all the product development frameworks, we find dual-track agile to be the most helpful. It’s very similar to Typeform’s approach to product development, which they call Discovery and Delivery.
Regardless of what you call it, the concept works like this:
You separate all of the tasks required to develop a product into two different categories: Discovery and Delivery. You then run agile sprints concurrently for each.
So while your Delivery team is developing already-approved features, your Discovery team is researching, prototyping, and validating new product functionality.
Discovery tasks include:
Customer discovery
Data analysis
Market and competitor research
Product vision document
Learn UX canvas
Design sprint
Solution document
Prototyping
Delivery tasks include:
Story mapping
Event storming
Design ready
Release plan
Spikes
Story backlog
Backlog refinement
Sprint planning
Acceptance criteria
A/B testing
3. Learn how to become a true product manager
When building a new product, most entrepreneurs begin with zero product management experience. This isn’t a death sentence for your product, but it could be if you don’t take the practice of PM seriously.
Here are some ways to upskill fast:
Commit to interviewing a certain number of target users each month.
Learn how to create a roadmap using the Now, Next, Later Framework.
Gain a basic understanding of the coding framework your developers will be using (we recommend Laravel).
Curate your backlog and remove tasks that aren’t absolutely necessary for launching V1 of your product, or whatever launch you’re working on.
Learn how to track and analyze developer productivity (see point #5 below).
Review feedback from your users (or your competitors’ users if you don’t have a beta product yet—you can find feedback in their social media accounts and a public roadmap and idea board if they have one).
Learn how to write user stories to guide design and development.
You can read our favorite product management techniques to learn more.
And remember that you’ll be bringing on a TPM as part of the development team. While the roles are different, there is overlap that you can leverage as you journey into product management.
4. Get help with code reviews
You can pay a third-party service to review your code. If you’re pulling together a product development team for the first time, it’s a really good idea to fork out the extra money for code reviews. Instead of guessing if you’re getting high-quality, lightweight code, you’ll know for sure. This will improve your abilities as a manager while saving you a lot of money in the long-run.
If you’re experienced in managing technical products, you might not need to hire external code reviewers. Instead, just set up a system so that each developer’s code is being reviewed by someone else.
5. Track and review your team’s productivity like a pro
And lastly, the best product development teams are extensively monitored. You need to know how to track your teams’ work and measure their output. For instance, you might use a platform like DevStats to track developer productivity. This will provide the data you need to make sure your team is progressing at a good pace towards your product launch.
However, if this is your first time managing a product team, you might not know what to expect. In this instance creating an organization chart can help you keep track of everyone's roles and their progress. You can also consider hiring a consultant to help you with the first few months of development. They can review your entire team’s output and help you understand whether your team is high-performing or not.
Build your product with DevSquad
Often times, it’s simply not worth it to attempt to manage a product team yourself, especially if you don't have experience.
You’ll often save money by hiring a team that already knows how to work together (compared to hiring and managing resources yourself).
Interested in working with a consultancy? What makes DevSquad different is that we’re product-level thinkers.
We provide a fully managed dev team with all of the resources you need, from strategy through quality.
