Say we have a team with a product manager, a designer, and four developers. The product manager reports to a product director. The designer reports to a design director (who reports to the product director's boss, the CPO). And the developers report to an engineering manager, who reports into a CTO (eventually).
I’m fortunate to be working in a setup at Revolut where the reporting line looks something like this:
[Engineering + Design -> Product Management] -> Department Lead (oversees Product + Ops teams) -> CEO
Most other departments that are business units with a P&L are run this way and reports into CEO.
[Engineering + Design -> Product Management] is the team boundary and is considered a product team. Engineers are in product. Design is in product.
Product managers are expected to manage the team not just the product. Incentives are aligned with structure.
Working in this way has spoilt me to a certain extent. I’m not sure how I can go back to working in the setup you described in your post. It just seems wrong.
This is really useful org design thinking. Why did you invert the diagram showing the mid-level cross-functional teams?
Also, perhaps a separately and exacerbating situation is dependencies across multiple product teams. When the mid-level managers are their own cross-functional team, they can help identify early and resolve resulting conflicts more efficiently.
I’m fortunate to be working in a setup at Revolut where the reporting line looks something like this:
[Engineering + Design -> Product Management] -> Department Lead (oversees Product + Ops teams) -> CEO
Most other departments that are business units with a P&L are run this way and reports into CEO.
[Engineering + Design -> Product Management] is the team boundary and is considered a product team. Engineers are in product. Design is in product.
Product managers are expected to manage the team not just the product. Incentives are aligned with structure.
Working in this way has spoilt me to a certain extent. I’m not sure how I can go back to working in the setup you described in your post. It just seems wrong.
Wouldn't it be good if the CTO and the CPO teams had a communication channel as well?
This is really useful org design thinking. Why did you invert the diagram showing the mid-level cross-functional teams?
Also, perhaps a separately and exacerbating situation is dependencies across multiple product teams. When the mid-level managers are their own cross-functional team, they can help identify early and resolve resulting conflicts more efficiently.