How products get built

Background: In working at various companies and in talking with a lot of recruiters, it’s clear that teams that build products are structured very differently. Sometimes UX sits under product (Payscale, Chatbox, Expedia), sometimes under engineering (Expedia), sometimes as it’s own equally weighted discipline (Shopify). Sometimes engineering rolls up into product (The Riveter), sometimes vice-versa. There is a lot of literature out there on how to be a great product manager and how to build a great product from a PM perspective (or an engineering or UX perspective), but I haven’t seen a lot on how to help an organization structure itself and collaborate successfully. And there’s not a lot on how are products REALLY being built. I want to know what’s actually happening, not the theory of how “in perfect world” product could/should be done.

Goal: I’d like to interview a LOT of leaders of product, engineering, UX teams and whoever they report into…often CEOs. I want to understand how product is ACTUALLY being produced:

  • How are the teams structured and has that changed over time (why/when)
  • What are the challenges of the current structure
  • How are you actually building the product… Agile/waterfall/a mix? Spec/no spec? Stories/no stories? Written by whom? Using which tools?
  • Are there scrum teams? “Real” scrum? A version of scrum? Who’s on the team?
  • Roadmaps…do you use them? How often? Who’s involved? Are they useful?
  • What do you actually do for user research? How does it fit in the process?
  • How does QA fit into your process?
  • Analytics – buy/build? Who’s defining the metrics and reporting?
  • Etc…

And then I’d like to be able to look at that information along different dimensions:

  • B2B vs. B2C product
  • Size of company
  • Size of revenue
  • # of customers
  • Company stage (ex: Series A funded)
  • Etc…

With all of that, I believe there will be some fascinating insights to help organizations figure out how best to structure teams and build products.

If you’re interested in being interviewed or in having access to the research, please email me.

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