Team Management

How to arrange your team? This is one question which drives all top shots in the industry nuts. There is no SINGLE RIGHT answer to this. Well not really. Actually the ONLY SINGLE RIGHT answer to this is the TEAM MATURITY. But it is normally only there in the wish-list of everyone and never ever in execution.

Before we get into the details, let us understand briefly how most product companies are. A product is made up of parts and the same part can be used in different products. So Product and Part form a N x N matrix between themselves. For ex. Salt, sugar and water are three parts and sweet water + salt water are two products.

Now there are two broad ways of management in a product company:

a) Different Product Owner and Part Owner: We have an expert who knows the exact quantity of sugar that should be mixed in exact quantity of water to get the taste which sells. So this EXACT guy becomes our Product Owner for Sweet Water. He is worried only about quantity and does not spend too much thinking about quality. Quality has to be ensured by the guy from whom this EXACT guy borrows sugar and water from. These guys form the QUALITY guys. Now if a customer comes in the saying water is too sweet, the EXACT guy goes to the SWEET QUALITY guy and breaks loose on him. But it could be that water quantity mixed was less. So this EXACT guy was not REALLY EXACT. He pretended to be EXACT.

HOW CAN THE EXACT GUY DELIVER A QUALITY PRODUCT WITHOUT QUALITY PARTS? He can only if the same QUALITY PARTS are being used in some already proved QUALITY PRODUCT.

WHY WILL THE QUALITY GUYS BELIEVE EXACT GUY IS REALLY EXACT? They will only if the EXACT guy proves it time and again.

b) Same Product Owner and Part Owner: Now there is this ONE guy who knows EXACTLY how much sugar and how much water goes to form SWEET WATER which sells. And this ONE guy knows which QUALITY SUGAR and WATER will get him QUALITY SWEET WATER. Well, this is possible. BUT WHERE IS THIS ONE GUY? Nowhere most probably.

And if he is there somewhere, WHY WOULD OTHERS BELIEVE THAT HE IS THE ONE GUY AND THAT THEY ARE GOOD FOR NOTHING? They will if this ONE guy proves time and again that he is THE ONE GUY.