The Product Organization
The term product organization gets used when there are at least two product managers inside the company. The structure of product organizations differs from business to business. One of the biggest factors that affects that structure is the employee count inside the company. Once the number of product teams gets bigger, there emerges a need for scaling the processes so that the interaction between the teams flows smoothly and effectively.
A fully shaped product organization can be found mainly in emerging-stage (scaleups) or enterprise-level companies. Things are usually different in early-stage startups since these are mostly flat in structure. However, once the early-stage startup gets its second product manager there becomes a need for a clear understanding regarding who is the final decision-maker. Let’s now break down the positions that a product organization can include from lowest to highest.
Associate Product Manager
The associate product manager (APM) position refers to the most entry-level role inside the product organization. The typical APM is either a recent college graduate or a person who has been in a different position for a few years and has decided to change their career path. Usually, people who start their role as an APM go through an intensive rotational apprenticeship program before they get fully assigned to a specific product team. Those programs usually include both theoretical training and practical work on small product increments.
Once APMs successfully complete their rotational programs, they usually start working on a small area of the product and under the leadership and mentorship of a more experienced product manager. Note that it is not recommended for APMs to work independently since they still need a consistent amount of guidance for their first years of employment. It is safe to say that compared to the other roles in the organizational hierarchy, APMs don’t contribute much to the products since their number one priority is learning.
Let’s use an example to illustrate the scope of the APM’s work. Imagine the product team has a goal to decrease the customer acquisition cost (CAC) by introducing a friend referral program inside their product. Assume that the product manager has decided that users will be able to invite their friends through their social media accounts. In this scenario, APM would be responsible for determining whether Twitter should be part of the options for users to refer their friends to use the product or not. Even in a small case like this, the product manager should be there to guide the APM to make sure they don’t have a hard time.
Being an APM is the best time to gain domain-oriented knowledge to start contributing to the success of the product. My recommendation to entry-level product managers is to interact with product team members and internal and external stakeholders on a daily basis. That is the quickest way for them to get relevant expertise to gain the trust of their peers. Usually, the APM would need to gain from one to two years of experience to be able to move on to the next level of their career, which would be as the product manager.
Product Manager
The product manager is the most common job title among all else in the line. Typical product managers are people who were promoted either from an APM position or pivoted to product management after having an extensive background in the relevant disciplines.
A natural transition could be pivoting from several years of data analyst role into a product manager position. In some cases, when people pivot directly to product management, companies still need to run more extensive versions of the rotational programs that were available for APMs to make sure that the transition goes as smoothly as possible. Oftentimes, this type of informal training is held by an assigned mentor from a higher organizational role.
If I put it broadly, a product manager is someone who has at least a few years of product experience and a decent amount of soft skills to operate independently and lead the work of the product team. When it comes to product managers, there are fewer precautions associated with their expertise. Unlike the APM, a product manager can handle a whole product or a part of a product if it is something that needs the work of several product teams.
To illustrate their scope of the decision-making process, let’s compare the product manager’s role to an APM’s role. If APM can be assigned to understand if Twitter should be one of the options for inviting friends to the product, the product manager makes the final call if Twitter API should be integrated into the system or not. The range of the decision-making process for product managers might vary based on the company size as well. For instance, in an early-stage startup, a product manager can even make higher-level decisions, such as whether the entire referral program should be implemented or not.
People holding the product manager’s role are expected to either be the experts of their domain or quickly become one. If the product manager is new to the team, then the recommended time to master their domain is the first three months of their work. As many of those product managers are assigned to individual teams, they need to be able to gain the trust of their teammates as soon as it is humanly possible to start leading the team towards the product vision. Usually, people spend at least three to four years in this position until they reach the next level, which is a senior product manager.
Senior Product Manager
A senior product manager is a level up from the standard product manager’s role mainly because of the vast product experience and knowledge the holder of that position has inside the company. In case the person was directly hired as a senior product manager, then the reason is most probably because of the big contributions and accomplishments they had as a product manager in their previous companies. People holding this role also act as mentors to product managers and APMs inside their product teams and organizations.
Compared to the roles below the organizational hierarchy, senior product managers usually interact the most with mid and senior-level product leadership. From the decision-making point of view, senior product managers have a considerable amount of freedom since companies rely a lot on their expertise. Let’s illustrate the following scenario. The product leadership informs the senior product manager regarding high user acquisition costs. A senior product manager might decide that the way their product team can help the company to decrease those numbers is by introducing a friend referral program inside their product.
An important factor that usually describes the seniority of a product manager is their combined expertise in both B2C and B2B sectors. This is because there are certain domain specifics when building products for consumers versus building products for businesses. Senior product managers have strong experience in tackling challenges both on the consumer side and for businesses. Also, note that there is no fixed number of years one can remain a senior product manager. Once you hit seniority, you can be there for as long as you want to since later come more mentorship and leadership-related positions.
Group Product Manager
After the senior level, a product manager may choose to either become a highly reputable product person inside their company or to become an actual manager of product managers, one that directly supervises a portion of the product organization. The first path is usually related to group product managers (also known as GMPs.) The role of a GPM is more of the role of the individual contributor (IC) with the requirement of mentoring other product managers that are working across their product line.
Note that the GPM still stays hands-on and has their own product team where they are heavily involved in product work. They might also be working on the company’s most important directions. However, besides their daily product work, they also empower, educate and guide product managers of related products/directions and provide them with training and mentorship. Note that in many places, GPMs don’t have real authority over those product managers. They are just acting more like experienced product consultants or advisors for them.
People who don’t want to be involved in managerial responsibilities can stay as GPMs for the rest of their careers. And this is totally fine. Some people want to explore the administrative aspects of product management, and others want to continue building great products. Due to the long-lasting product work inside the company, GPMs eventually become the domain gurus. This makes them very valuable assets to the business. That is why I recommend companies to concentrate more on having a long-term strategy for producing GPMs in-house, rather than consistently hiring new ones.
Director of Product (Management)
The second potential career path after being a senior product manager is the role of a director of product (management.) The responsibilities of the director of product management are more managerial. This is a challenging role since it not only requires to be able to manage products but also people, which can be quite tough at times.
Instead of concentrating on daily product work, the director of product management concentrates more on the overall strategy of their product line. They also need to make sure that the work of the product managers inside their product line is well aligned since there might be a lot of dependencies.
The director of product management has a say on high-level decisions while leaving the lower-level decisions to be made by their reporters. To illustrate the scope of their decision-making process, let’s illustrate the following scenario. For instance, the senior-level product leadership communicates about the high user acquisition costs with the director of product management. The director of product management analyzes if improving the solutions inside their product line can contribute to the business objective by decreasing the acquisition costs. If that is the case, the director of product management starts communicating with their product managers, introducing them to the possible problems and guiding them in certain aspects if necessary.
Once again, there is no concrete amount of years for one to stay in this role. This might be a lifetime peak for someone or the least product management responsibility before pivoting to other business roles. If these are not the cases, the person either becomes part of product leadership inside the company or joins another company as a product leader.
Chief Product Officer/Vice President of Product (Management)
These are the two main roles of senior-level product leadership. In some organizational settings, the CPO and VPoP roles are pretty much the same. At the same time, there are companies, where VPoPs are responsible for large organizational units (with several directors of products reporting to them) and they directly report to the CPO.
Note that both startups and larger companies can have this position. The role is responsible for all the products and product teams out there. They are the people who discuss and set up a company’s business objectives as well as the key results (OKRs) with the company’s C-level management and then negotiate these goals with the product teams.
They are the people who maintain the organizational alignment, making sure that each product team is contributing to the most important areas/metrics for the business. They are the primary product evangelist in a company and the people who are responsible for the direction the company takes product-wise.
About the importance of having a clear structure for product organization
Having a clear structure for product organization is key to having a better corporate culture within your product team and the company in general. A clear structure will help everyone understand careers, roles, and teams. It will provide the foundation for you and everyone in your company to see if titles really reflect their jobs; if they are transparent enough so that applicants looking for a job in your company can understand what you are hiring for and what their career path will look like.
Do you want to discuss the structure of your product organization and learn how you can improve it? Let’s chat!
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About The Author
Rafayel Mkrtchyan is a product management advisor who helps companies improve their product discovery and delivery processes. He teaches teams how to set up a winning product strategy and sustainable growth model, run customer and product development processes, develop outcome-, experiment-, and data-driven mindset, as well as robust their lean, agile, and design thinking skills.
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