Charting “Product vs. Feature Teams”

Are you leading a delivery team, a feature team, or a product team?

I was inspired by product thought leader Marty Cagan’s recent article “Product vs. Feature Teams” and the follow up article “Product Team FAQ.” In the follow up, Marty defined three types of team structures that make up the technology product discipline:

Delivery teams are not cross-functional (basically just developers plus a backlog administrator product owner), they are not focused on outcome (they are all about output), and they are not empowered (they are there to code and ship).

Feature teams usually are cross-functional (at least some form of designer and some form of product manager), but they are still all about output and not empowered.

Product teams are cross-functional, focused and measured by outcome, and empowered to come up with solutions that work.

Because of these clear definitions, I have been able to better identify how my team is operating and have specific actions for my team to become a high-performing product team.

Visualize the Difference

Here’s a chart to visualize the difference among these various teams:

The primary difference between feature teams and products teams is a focus on achieving customer outcomes, not simply on output or delivery.

Some indicators that you might be a feature team:

• Your conversations are dominated by timeline and delivery dates rather than your customers’ problems, needs, and jobs to be done.
• Hyper-focused on velocity without much thought for the purpose of your velocity (ie solving customer problems).
• Launch party celebrations vs customer validation pre-launch.
• Product requirements dictated to the team vs. the team discovering product needs and solutions.

So what is a customer outcome?

I find clarity in Jobs to Be Done theory, which says that a customer “job” that they would “hire” your product to accomplish is the progress a person is trying to make in a specific set of circumstances. Focusing on the job to be done, or the outcome the customer is attempting to achieve, is the key to becoming a product team.

Your Comments:

I’d love to hear your thoughts on some of these questions:

• How do you discover customer outcomes?
• How do you stay focused on customer outcomes?
• How do you measure whether you’re achieving customer outcomes?
• If you find that you’re sliding into operating as a feature team, what do you do to shift back to being a product team?