Spotify:
Spotify organizes its product teams into four units: tribes, squads, chapters, and guilds. Squads are the smallest working unit that are composed to design, build, test, and release a certain product area, and each of them has a long-term mission and gets to freely decide its working methods. Tribes are made of groups of squads working in related areas where their job is to create conditions for the squads to work more effectively for certain job tasks. Chapters are people with similar specialties within a tribe from different squads, where they could share their area of expertise and specific challenges to make sure people across squads don’t repeat what’s already been done. Finally, a guild is a more organic cross-tribes community of interest for people to freely share their knowledge, tools, codes, and best practices.
At Spotify, the PM (product owner) sits within the squad. The PM is responsible for prioritizing the work to be done by the team, but they are not involved with how the team does their works. In short, the PM serves the function to manage the overall direction of product development instead of details. They maintain a product backlog for their squads, and PM from squads will collaborate with each other to maintain a high-level roadmap.
Airbnb:
At Airbnb, senior leadership, led by Brian Chesky, sets major product priorities through a shared company roadmap. Functional leaders and product managers shape initiatives within that direction. The PM works across design, engineering, marketing, and operations, combining product strategy with responsibility for communicating customer value. PMs can own an area’s vision, roadmap, and success measures, but they do not independently control every product decision. Designers help shape the experience, engineering leaders own technical execution, and program managers coordinate delivery. PM authority therefore comes from product ownership and influence within priorities and reviews governed by senior leadership rather than unilateral control.
Zappos:
At Zappos, the central idea was to attach authority to clearly defined roles, rather than concentrate it in managers. Employees could hold several roles across different teams, called circles. Circles brought together individuals with different roles that share the same purposes, then an online organizational directory made people’s purposes and accountabilities visible. The circle’s purpose and priorities established the direction, then role holders identify work needed to fulfill their responsibilities and could act within their authority. Work affecting another role’s protected area required coordination or permission. If one wants to change their role/responsibilities she/he will go through governance process within the company. There is no official PM position from what I read. A circle will be solely responsible for itself, meaning they could put someone in a position like PM, but they could also evenly distribute the work.
Personal Favourite:
Spotify’s structure is my personal favourite because it keeps teams organized and responsibilities clearly divided. Having a PM-like role within a small unit, such as a squad, makes expectations clearer for both the PM and the team. By comparison, Airbnb’s structure seems to require product managers to coordinate across more functions, which could make their responsibilities broader and their boundaries less clear.
I also like how Spotify’s leadership roles focus on setting direction and supporting teams, while squads decide how to develop their products. This gives teams considerable freedom while keeping their work aligned with broader goals.
Another appealing feature is that product owners across squads coordinate with one another on the overall roadmap. This allows direction to develop through discussions between people working closely with individual teams. Airbnb also involves collaboration across functions, but its shared roadmap and senior leadership reviews appear to place greater emphasis on centralized coordination.
