Gavin Deadman
In a startup, it’s common for the c-suite to function as the product manager until product-market fit has been validated.
Once validated, it’s time to build the product for real which would require a product manager to work in a product team that also includes a product designer and several engineers to continue learning and solving customer problems/demands.
As the product grows, so does the business and resources, then before you know it, the product manager is running around trying to keep the product afloat by keeping customers happy, growing the product, validating ideas, managing expectations with stakeholders and ensuring that the product is on the right strategic track. The full breadth of the product manager role is vast!
At the same time of growing resources across the business, it’s essential to consider scaling the product management team, but before this happens you need to define your product lines/areas/verticals, so then you can hire product managers to manage, own and be accountable for a particular product line/area/vertical.
The best way to split up your product into lines is across the core value streams/customer experiences, for example:
- Cashier – Payment/withdrawal flows
- Compliance – Login flows/security, regulatory flows, marketing preferences/data protection flows
- Growth – Acquisition/CRM flows, account, and any MarTech integrations needed to achieve the growth OKRs
- Engagement – Focusing on driving engagements
- Community – Initiatives to drive social engagements
- Gaming – Integrations, content management and gaming experience
- Sportsbook – Integrations, trading and betting experience
- Web – Providing customers with the optimal web experience
- Apps – Providing customers with the optimal app experience through the App/Play Store
The Product Manager is fully accountable for the success of their product line, so as well as defining the product vision, KPIs, strategies and product roadmap for their product line, they would also be part of an Agile product team (including a product designer and engineers) who would together manage the product backlog, execute the VMOST, product backlog items (PBIs) and test hypothesis.
Now, letting product teams manage a specific product line (which comes with ownership (autonomy and empowerment)) can be a terrifying thought for some businesses since they often prefer a more controlled project management approach, which is why they just hire product managers (or product owners) and stick them in a scrum team to execute projects from a pre-defined roadmap. Marty Cagan articulates this widespread problem and its impacts well in his recent article on project teams vs. product teams.
Saying this, there are also some challenges when transforming to a product line structure:
| Benefits | Challenges |
| Clear product ownership across the business | Managing cross product line/area dependencies although tools such as Aha! certainly helps |
| Accountability for KPIs and live product support | More effort needed on alignment especially on high priority cross-cutting initiatives |
| Autonomy | Switching to a more learning, trust and empowered culture which isn’t always quick and easy |
| Empowered product teams | |
| Focus on outcomes over outputs | |
| Domain expert knowledge | |
| Efficiency | |
| Ability to continually improve key product areas staying ahead of the competition | |
| Leaders at every level | |
| Product/tech team retention |
Essentially, what product lines give you if done effectively, is empowered mission-focused Agile product teams who are motivated to execute the VMOST which they defined for their product area in collaboration with key stakeholders.
The outcome of this is having a best-of-breed product, delivering more customer value quicker.
