Spotify organizes individuals into cross-functional squads, each focused on a specific product area. Then related squads are grouped into tribes by product area, with cross-squad chapters established for leadership and people management. There are also voluntary guilds that create community among employees across different teams, enabling them to share knowledge and collaborate on common interests. Spotify aims to create a sense of autonomy and alignment; thus, teams can move quickly while being in the same Direction. Decision-making on what is being built is deliberately decentralized to squads, and within the PM sits within the squad, where they provide guidance and prioritize goals to produce,
Airbnb follows a functional, founder-mode organization. It’s where employees are grouped by their specialized function or department. Within each is a different level of management and staff to ensure clear authority and responsibility; each group reports to a high-level executive. Unlike Spotify, Airbnb has centralized decision-making, which allows for consistency across departments. Airbnb has also “eliminated” the traditional PM role, instead merging product management and marketing into a single unit. PMs at Airbnb are in charge of building and launching products; individuals in the role must know how to develop and promote products to their users.
There’s also Zappos, which follows a holacracy framework. This approach prioritizes projects and teams, organizing individuals by specific roles that may vary by time and project. It’s essentially multiple circles interconnected and within one another. A large circle of a mixed department can be divided into circles of teams that focus on a specific niche. There’s no hierarchy, as higher-ups can set goals but not dictate how small circles achieve them. Zappos’ model has no product managers; rather, the responsibilities of following and improving the product role maps fall onto the circle as a whole.
Sources:
https://medium.com/@openwork/no-managers-no-problem-how-zappos-became-a-holacracy-23acd8cc6a21
https://www.retaildive.com/news/inside-holacracy-zappos-radical-new-management-structure/398686/
https://igotanoffer.com/blogs/product-manager/airbnb-product-manager-interview#role
https://alipilevar.medium.com/beyond-functional-vs-multi-divisional-how-founder-mode-is-reshaping-tech-innovation-28b16f5b04a5
https://www.atlassian.com/work-management/team-management-and-leadership/team-management-strategies/functional-organizational-structure
https://www.atlassian.com/agile/agile-at-scale/spotify
