Kin — Structuring for Success
Kin is a digital sharing economy of equal opportunities. In our 2018 product vision post we detailed where we want to focus and what our main product efforts will be — the ones that we believe will drive Kin usage and adoption among users and developers. In order to accomplish that, we needed to rethink the way the teams are structured and ask ourselves if we are structured in the best way — a way that will enable us to win and accomplish our goals.
Functional vs Cross Functional teams
There are many ways to build a product organization. Two of the most common product team structures are functional and cross-functional teams.
A functional team is made up of people which all have a specific function or expertise. For example, a team that is responsible for iOS development will be made up of all the iOS developers in the company.
A company that is structured using functional teams will usually have various teams which each hold one specific function. There will be a team that is responsible for iOS development, a team that is responsible for web development, a separate team for product that holds all the product managers of the company, a team for the designers etc.
The benefits of this structure is that it favors expertise and the functional aspects — one of the goals of the teams is to improve that specific function and build its expertise in the company. For example, the Android team will also be responsible for the technical goals of the Android platform within the company.
The downside of this structure is the overhead needed in order to create a product which requires coordinations between all the teams in order to release a feature. This in turn creates communication overhead which increases risk and makes it harder to release a great product.
A cross-functional team is made up of people with all kinds of functional skills and usually works on one specific product. The team has all the needed functions in order to reach their goal and deliver a great product.
For example, a team that builds a mobile application will usually have a product manager, a designer, a QA engineer, and all the relevant development expertise (i.e. iOS, Android, Server) that are qualified to build the required product.
This kind of team will live and breath the product each day, will be product driven and will be able to function as a small startup within the company in an autonomous way to deliver the best product to their users.
One of the risks that needs to be addressed in this structure is that the functional aspects in the company will have different standards in each of the teams. This risk is easy to mitigate by forming functional forums that will hold the functional aspects and will make sure the same standards, tools and methodologies are being used by the people of this specific function across the teams in the company.
Restructuring for Success
We believe in autonomy and we want to make sure that our teams will deliver the best products for our users and developers.
This is the reason that as of today we are restructuring our product teams from functional teams into cross-functional teams we call feature teams.
Each of the teams will work on one specific product effort and will hold all the required functionalities that is needed in order to face their challenge, reach their goals and deliver great products.
We will have three feature teams:
- The Blockchain team — Will be responsible for delivering the blockchain infrastructure that will be required in order to support Kin.
- The Ecosystem team — Will be responsible for building the required products for the developers and brands that will be part of the Kin ecosystem. This team will help onboard our partners into the Kin ecosystem in a smooth and easy way.
- The Standalone Wallet team — Will be responsible for delivering a standalone wallet application that will help educate consumers about crypto tokens and provide the discovery experience of where they can go to use KIN
In addition to the feature teams we are also experimenting in creating the required forums that will support the functional aspects of the company.
An example of such a forum can be the server forum which will be made up of all the server developers in the company. Each of the forums will make sure that we keep the high standards and high expertise of the former functional teams, while learning, evolving and honing their skills.
Summary
Kin is about building a world where people win together by working together. We believe that in this new structure our teams can work more closely together in order to provide first-class experiences to our Kin community.
This step is only the beginning as we need to move fast, learn and adapt our processes and methodologies as a team. You can expect more updates as we learn and share our progress. In the weeks to come, we’ll share more about the changes in our processes, as well as a deeper dive into each team’s product vision and the people behind each product feature team.
It’s going to be an exciting year for Kin, all your feedback is much appreciated. Together we will help build a world where people win together by working together.
