Organization Structure of product Organization: Create the product that the user likes

Source: Internet
Author: User

Article Description: Reconstruct the organizational structure of the product department.

Remark: Organizational structure can affect people's behavior. As long as the role is accurate, the management is appropriate, most of the organizational structure is feasible, if your company's organizational structure and any of the theoretical recommendations are different, the company is working well, it is recommended that you keep this structure does not make any changes.

Marty Cagan published on April 16, 2008, the original link, translator: Panshi/revisers: Jiang Shenxian Lin Ai Xu Dingxiang

I have discussed several key roles in the product organization, including product managers, project managers, interaction designers, visual designers, usability engineers, prototyping people, engineers, architects, testers,/QA, and product marketers, and the relationships between these roles, Yet such a complex organizational structure still makes the enterprise feel confused.

Although the organizational structure of each product organization is different, I believe that in the past few years, a standard organizational structure has emerged. And its appearance exists its rationality.

In fact, the organizational structure is not my focus, I am more concerned about the roles of the Organization and its related responsibilities. I believe that the majority of the organizational structure is feasible as long as the roles are accurate and managed properly. And I think, rather than copy a successful enterprise's organizational model, according to the characteristics of the leadership team to customize a more consistent with the company's own product organization.

As we all know, organizational structure can affect people's behavior. In the case of other conditions, if the company's organizational structure is changed according to the following ways, it will reap unexpected good results.

I am here to discuss the product department, not the other departments of the company, such as sales, customer service, finance, business development and it (non product development) departments.

I think the CEO, COO, and the general manager of a subsidiary need to have his staff clearly divided into three departments: marketing, product management and design, product development. It was also ensured that the three departments were the highest level of the organizational structure of the company, without the presence of one of the departments in a separate department.

Suggest a ceo/coo of a small or medium sized company, or the business manager of a large company, to make the following arrangements for the organizational structure:

– The marketing department includes its corporate marketing (corporate marketing), marketing Communications (marketing communications), field marketing (field marketing), Product marketing (products marketing).

– Product management and Design Department is responsible for product management and user experience Design (interactive design/information architecture, visual design, prototyping, user research/usability development), if the conditions permit, the department can also introduce industry experts.

– The Product development Department is primarily responsible for product architecture, code authoring, quality testing, product launches, platform operations (SaaS software Operators), and project Management (PMO, project management Office).

Comments:

– IT departments that provide in-house employee technical services are different from product development departments. This is in the future article I will describe in detail. Here, I only stress that there are essential differences between the two organizations in terms of demand, so the management should be different. It is typically administered by CIOs CIO, who is responsible for managing the product development department by the CTO (Chief Technology Officer) or VP (Product Development VP/VP of Engineering).

-In some companies, the PMO (Project management Office) as the highest level of management, which is in itself true. But most of the time, the PMO is part of the product development department, because most of the resources that the project manager manages are in the product development department, so the product development Director is solely responsible for the implementation and delivery of the product. However, the project manager is directly under the control of the project management office in any case.

– Whether the user experience design is grouped into a marketing department or a product development department can cause problems. The user Experience team (especially the interaction designer) and the product manager should be the grasshoppers tied to a rope. To make the product manager work more closely with the user experience design team, a growing number of companies have opted to merge product management and product design into the same department (but each function has its own principals, such as product management Director in charge of product strategy, and the user experience Director is responsible for the overall information architecture and style of the platform/software).

– In the marketing department, there are often graphic designers who are responsible for marketing projects and advertising. The visual design team in the user experience organization may also be able to meet the needs of the marketing effort, but I think it would be better to set up such a position in the marketing department. A strong user experience is inseparable from continuous attention to interaction design and visual design of the application. And the leaders of these graphic designers should know how to support the product team. If your creative director is a product-class visual design and marketing visual design of the dual-omnipotent, then your company is blessed, because such a visual design team can meet both the requirements of the design, the brand image will be very consistent. However, if the visual design team leader is subordinate to the marketing department but does not understand the product demand, must make some changes as soon as possible.

-Don't confuse user research with usability research. User research is based on demographic and consumer behavior (including the purchase model) on the basis of customer analysis and research. Therefore, as long as product managers and interaction designers can find user researchers at any time and establish a good working relationship with each other, users can be studied as part of the marketing campaign. Usability research is a specific study of personas, prototypes, and how users can easily use their products. Unlike user research, usability research results are directly fed back to interaction designers, visual designers, and product managers. As a result, usability researchers are an integral part of the user experience design team, so that they can better collaborate with other members in the process of researching the product, and their results can be better and faster fed back to the people involved.

– Some companies classify product marketing as a product department. This structure does not produce big problems, and may have some advantages. But I still think it would be better to separate product marketing, because marketers can be more accurate in their role positioning, and the division of functions between product management and product marketing is clearer. But even if product management and product marketing belong to one department, they should not confuse their responsibilities.

– The organizational structure of an entrepreneurial company is usually simpler because the company is more focused on individual capabilities than the organizational structure. But it would be wise to adopt an effective organizational structure as soon as the company is on track and into a fast-growing phase.

– If your organization is different from what I recommend, the company is working well and advises you to keep the structure unchanged. But if your team struggles on the brink of pain and the birth of a good product is more difficult than expected, consider improving the organizational structure to see if it will improve.

Special thanks to Chuck Geiger and Kyrie Robinson for their contribution to this article.

P.S. Marty Cagan will attend the first Pm-china Product Manager Summit Forum, then, I may be a guest of the host, hehe, please see the details: http://www.pm-china.org.

This article is an excerpt from the author's blog from the Book of Revelation: Creating users ' favorite products. This book introduces the practical experience and idea of modern software (Internet) product management from three angles of people, process and product. I hereby thank Mr. Marty Cagan for his authorization.



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