Structuring Product Teams for Success: Insights from Melissa Perri

In a recent LinkedIn post, product management expert Melissa Perri discusses the critical importance of how product teams are organized, emphasizing that the right structure can lead to seamless value delivery, while the wrong one can create detrimental silos.

Perri highlights that the way companies structure their product teams is often underestimated in its impact. She states:

“This question comes up constantly, and the answer matters more than most leaders realize. Get it wrong, and you create silos that fracture the customer experience. Get it right, and value flows naturally.”

As Melissa Perri notes, effective team organization is key to a positive customer experience and efficient value flow. She outlines two primary, effective methods for structuring product teams.

Organizing by Customer Persona

Perri suggests organizing teams by customer persona when there are distinct differences in what various user groups need from a product. She uses the example of electronic health records systems to illustrate this point. In such systems, the needs of back-office staff handling billing are vastly different from those of doctors and nurses using clinical tools. According to Perri, each of these distinct user groups requires dedicated focus from a product team.

Organizing by Jobs-to-be-Done

Another effective strategy, as highlighted by Perri, is to organize by jobs-to-be-done. This approach is suitable when different user personas may overlap in their tool usage but have divergent goals. Perri explains that this method works well when multiple roles interact with the same product but are leveraging it to achieve different outcomes.

“Both approaches anchor back to value streams and how customers actually experience your product.”

In both recommended structures, Perri emphasizes that the focus remains anchored to value streams and the actual customer experience with the product.

The Pitfalls of Organizing by Architecture

Conversely, Melissa Perri strongly advises against organizing teams based on technical architecture. She points out that many companies make the mistake of splitting teams by areas like “mobile,” “web,” and “API.” This approach, according to Perri, inevitably leads to fragmented features, a lack of ownership over the end-to-end customer journey, and ultimately, customers caught in the middle of organizational complexities.

“Your team structure should reflect how value reaches customers, not how your code is written.”

Perri’s core argument is that team structure should mirror the path of value delivery to the customer, rather than the internal technical implementation. She concludes her post by inviting discussion on current team structures and their effectiveness, while also directing readers to a podcast episode for a more in-depth discussion with Jose Quesada and Matthew Skelton.

As Melissa Perri argues, a deliberate and customer-centric approach to team organization is fundamental for businesses aiming to deliver value effectively and ensure a cohesive customer experience.