Moving a product from inception to launch? You’ll need a good manager.
Of course, it’s not quite that simple, and what effective leadership looks like at one company can look very different at the next. In other words, no one’s saying effective product management requires a one-size-fits-all approach. It’s only natural that teams at different companies organize themselves around different schools of thought when it comes to the best way to structure their product teams.
That said, most companies tend to follow one of two basic models for product team structure: functional or general. In the more centralized “functional” model, functional managers oversee specific departments; you might see functional managers referred to as chief technology officers or chief product officers, for example. Through the more decentralized “general” model, in contrast, general managers oversee all areas of the business, communicating with every department and taking ownership of various product and engineering resources.
Given the differences between these two models, how does a company structure its product teams for maximum efficiency? As is often the case in business, such a broad question demands more than one answer — so we asked two managers at successful tech companies to weigh in with their stance on the great “functional versus general” debate.
BillGO is an award-winning bill management and payments platform that enables users to fully manage their day-to-day bills and subscriptions all in one place while offering a more efficient way to send and receive payments.
Would you say that your product organization follows a functional structure, or more of a general manager model? Why does that make sense for your team?
BillGO is a fast-growing organization, so what’s optimal today may not be optimal in X-number of months. Having said that, we recently moved to a general-management model for Bill Pay, our primary product, and we are functionally organized around that. Specifically, we have oriented ourselves toward the main customer experience (CX) aspect of the customer’s journey. Our five product leads focus on those vertical experiences, as well as how the entire horizontal experience comes together. This is not only logical, but it also enables us to focus on the one thing that matters above all else: the customer’s journey through our product.
What are the potential drawbacks of structuring your product organization in this way, and how do you mitigate them?
One possible drawback to this model is that, as we focus and obsess on specific experiences, we risk losing sight of the end-to-end journey in its entirety. Getting that wrong could result in an overall clunky customer experience, as opposed to a fluid one.
Our structure enables us to focus on the one thing that matters above all else: the customer’s journey through our product.”
However, we mitigate this by ensuring that product ownership is vertical (deep), horizontal (wide), and peer-reviewed. For example, we could have someone focus on and drill deep down into the customer-first experience, focusing on when they land on their Bill Pay page. But if we treated that as a standalone experience, we’d lose cohesion in terms of connecting that to the rest of the product. By ensuring the product lead is thinking about the overall experience, it helps ensure the rest of the experience is addressed and keeps everyone open to engaging with critiques from their peers.
How does your product organization structure set individual engineers and other contributors up for career growth over the long term?
Originally, we were very engineering lead-focused. We’re in the process of transitioning towards a more product-focused organization. This helps position our key contributors – specifically engineers — for success. Bringing them in early gives them the space they need to help us challenge assumptions we may have made, double tap on any problem statements, share solutions, review previous solutions, validate their own successes, and identify further areas for opportunity or growth.
Guild Education is a mission-led, women-founded and venture-funded company committed to expanding opportunity through education for America’s workforce. Guild partners with leading employers to build strategic education benefits programs for their employees, with a technology platform and a diverse academic network of the best schools for working adults.
Would you say that your product organization follows a functional structure, or more of a general manager model? Why does that make sense for your team?
At Guild, we follow a functional structure, which helps us invest in the success of all our stakeholders (employers, learning partners, and working adults) and achieve our goals in three main ways. First, operating as a centralized product team enables us to break traditional silos and make better product decisions that optimize successful outcomes for all stakeholders. The functional structure also allows our team to plan and execute more effectively.
Secondly, Guild is growing rapidly not only in terms of the customers and stakeholders we serve, but also in terms of the capabilities we bring as an overall solution, to help advance our mission of unlocking opportunity through education and upskilling for America’s workforce. We have several potential optimizations and prioritizations to make at any given time, and delivery toward these opportunities requires cross-team collaboration.
Lastly, the structure creates a shared sense of purpose. Guild’s biggest asset is the passion and competency of our employees. Having a centralized team helps us to share best practices while creating opportunities for continual growth. It instills in our team a deep, shared sense of identity and camaraderie.
What are the potential drawbacks of structuring your product organization in this way, and how do you mitigate them?
As with any functional structure, the biggest drawback is the potential for misalignment with business unit leaders. At Guild, we organized our product leadership team by business domain and created a dotted-line reporting relationship with their corresponding business unit leaders. In practice, this means that these product leaders are committed to bidirectional communication and alignment on priorities, roadmap, and status with each business unit. Product leaders also are accountable to the broader product organization, representing the business perspective in product planning and execution. This reporting relationship mitigates the risk of having a misaligned product strategy, and it increases communication across the organization.
Managers are able to define the why and what of our goals, while individuals can take responsibility and ownership of the how and when.”
How does your product organization structure set individual engineers and other contributors up for career growth over the long term?
We are deeply committed to supporting and fostering our own employees’ career growth and holistic well-being. We believe in hiring great talent and leading by objective. This leadership philosophy is about clarity, empowerment and accountability. Leaders are clear on their objectives and what success looks like; our managers are then able to set expectations for all individual contributors, support them along learning and growth pathways, celebrate their contributions, and empower them to drive business results. Managers are able to define the why and what of our goals, while individuals can take responsibility and ownership of the how and when.
Guild has created a culture that promotes teamwork and innovation while emphasizing individual growth through career development and learning opportunities. We offer our own mobility platform to all internal guilders to explore advanced education and upskilling, which allows them to develop their individual skills in parallel to Guild’s journey as a business. To build our teams for long-term success, we also offer resources to support mental and physical health, caregiving responsibilities, and financial planning.
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