At Spotify, teams are organized into squads of 6-12 members, each with “E2E responsibility for a specific feature area, product component, or user journey” (Peerdom). The PM sits within the squad as a Product Owner and defines what features they build, while the squad determines how they build. PMs have significant authority over the team’s output, although the tribe lead ensures that products align with the company’s overall strategy. Although responsibilities are clearly defined, I foresee friction between PMs and their teams over what they should build versus what is actually feasible.
At Airbnb, teams are organized by function. PMs shift to Product Marketing Managers, and “all the program management functions that PMs were doing [are] handed to actual program managers” (Air Focus). The PM sits within each function on equal footing with designers and has less authority than leadership and C-suite employees. Although the emphasis on marketing ensures that product decisions are tied to consumer behavior, the equal hierarchy between PMs and designers can slow the decision making process due to different priorities.
Zappos is structured by “circles instead of departments [and] roles instead of job descriptions”, and employees can fill roles across multiple circles (Service Innovation Labs). There’s a flat hierarchy with no manager titles, but PMs have authority over tasks related to their role(s). Although this ensures that every employee’s ideas are valued, a holacracy may result in loss of individual identity within a company.
I’d choose Spotify because Product Owners have clear responsibility over a product but still work in teams, allowing them to practice the CORE PM skills from the textbook: communication with stakeholders, organizing their teams, research to “live in the user’s reality”, and execution. I wonder how product managers balance launching new products with maintaining existing products post-launch.
Sources:
https://peerdom.com/blog/spotify-model-squads-tribes-chapters-guide
https://www.atlassian.com/agile/agile-at-scale/spotify/
