Question about org structures - what does your PM team org structure look like?

I've noticed a trend in the tech industry for product organizations to follow a structure that Spotify helped craft over the years, in which a company is organized into business sub-orgs that roll up into their own respective product and engineering leads. And those leads oversee various squads that make up the product areas within that sub-org. At CookUnity we call the product areas "zones", in which a product lead exists to drive the product strategy and manage the PM team. In smaller companie ...Read More

Today, our org structure follows the ethos of "Small, autonomous teams". In this structure, we generally have a PM paired with a Technical Lead (Eng), somewhere between 3 - 5 Engineers, and a Business Systems Analyst to focus on operational and analytical tasks. Some teams have a Design/UX representative as well, where applicable.  Hierarchically, we have these teams organized into Pillars, with a shared broader mission/remit. Pillars are led by a triad, with a Senior PM, Product Lead, or Group ...Read More

Let me give some guidance here on how I think about it.  It's critical to have a strong vision, strategy, roadmap, and success metrics for a team Your org structure should be organized to support the pillars of your strategy Beyond this there optionality to organize your team functionally the way that engineering teams are organized or strategically that maps more to your success metrics or some hybrid of both Most critically though you need to have as clean as possible swimlanes for PMs. Giving ...Read More

There's no single right way to structure any team. Some essential ingredients to creating an effective org are to create a structure that: Supports cross-functional work Aligns teams to customer problems Encourages knowledge sharing Provides for growth Your org structure will need to change as the company grows. And you will always need to account for silos, especially once the company grows beyond about 20 people. No matter what your org structure looks like, there will be silos, and you'll nee ...Read More

I don't believe there is one org structure that looks better than an other. so my answer here about my current team PM org structure is irrelevant but I can tell you a few things about it My current org structure will change with various business priorities. And it could/will change a lot. And that's ok Your last "reorg" isn't your last one. It's your most recent one. Optimize your teams by problems they are solving, not by solutions they are providing So many more advice I would be happy to giv ...Read More

Gitlab, my current company, the product organization is kind of unique. We have several product directors over each major products section which roles up to a VP of Product Management. Under each of those product directors, there can be a staff product manager, the highest level product manager when it comes right individual contributors, as well as several group managers, which are the managers of a particular product stage that owns a specific domain within the GitLab product. Individual contr ...Read More

There are many different ways to create an effective PM org structure. It really depends on the company, their strategy and values. At Gitlab, PM team organization led by CPO. VP of Product reports into CPO. Directors and Sr. Directors report into VP. Group Managers report into Directors/Sr. Directors. IC PMs report into Group Managers or directors. Highest level of IC is Sr. Staff Product Manager. CPO has Technology, Revenue, Sales and HR counterparts in the C-level who all report into the CEO. ...Read More

GitLab is quite transparent, so you can find our structure defined pretty publicly here. We have the overall product that we divide into sections, stages, groups and categories. This is how it makes sense for us to organize our work since GitLab is a product that supports many different feature areas across the software-development lifecycle, which we use as the foundation to set up the org structure. We have section leaders (typically Director/Senior Directors), stage leaders (often a group PM ...Read More