Making Teams Autonomous

Dependencies slows down product development, reduce autonomy and remove accountability. When you have handovers, if the product or feature fails you can always say “I did my job”.

But modern products are complex and require multiple teams to work on them in parallel. So how do we ensure that each team is autonomous while also contributing to the larger product?

There are two ways that teams might need to coordinate when developing features and these are based on how you draw the boundaries between teams: coordinate at the feature level or coordinate at the code level.

If you split teams by tech stack (e.g. web, mobile, API, data) then the teams will need to collaborate to build a feature because users care about the end experience which normally touches multiple levels of the stack.

If you have feature teams, or teams aligned to the customer journey, then you end up with multiple teams working on the same code base. Logical entities like Users, Orders, Product etc. will be shared across the whole customer journey. This can lead to merge hell and coordination conflicts on the path to production.

There is a third way. You can separate out the code for each part of the customer journey so that each team owns both the features set and the code. There is overhead involved but it finally gives teams the autonomy to be empowered. I go into more detail in the article below about Structuring Product Teams for Scale.

Cheers,
Rory

This Weeks Updates

Enabling the Team

How To Structure Teams For Scale by Rory Madden
The way that we structure our teams can either help or hinder when it comes to scaling. We need to ensure autonomy to improve outcomes.

Budgetless Companies: The Case of Mainfreight by Joost Minnaar
Mainfreight, a global logistics powerhouse, is known for its innovative management style that boldly rejects traditional budgeting.

Product Direction

Pre-Work for Setting OKRs by Christina Wodtke
Start with the mission and vision, revisit your strategy, understand priorities, set timeframes and more.

Positioning and Pessimistic Product Thinking by April Dunford
Overly pessimistic product thinking is where the team has decided that their product is an undifferentiated loser despite all evidence to the contrary.

Continuous Discovery

Shifting from a Feature Factory to Continuous Discovery at Doodle by Melissa Suzuno
Discover how Doodle's journey of shifting from a feature factory to a continuous discovery model fostered team collaboration.

Unbundling User Research by Dave Hora
As user research is rebuilt into product practices, all its parts — not just the interviewing — will eventually be re-integrated.

Continuous Design

Is It Good Design, Or Does It Just Look Good? by James Harrison
The over-emphasis on aesthetics in design is producing, as James puts it, beautiful garbage.

Bad Design Makes Money by Scott Berkun
Amazon.com is not a pretty website. We assume good design always makes business sense: often it doesn't.

Continuous Delivery

Platform as a Runtime - the Next Step in Platform Engineering by Aviran Mordo
Platforms accelerate software development. But they can do more by moving from infrastructure to the code layer.

The Hidden Cost of Using Managed Databases by Vignesh Ravichandran
Vignesh shows true cost of managed databases such as understanding operational constraints, considering limitations like reduced flexibility and observability.

Prioritisation is tough. Find out how King games prioritises across their 1,000 people

Ready to be the king of your domain? In his upcoming session at UXDX EMEA, Jaco Els will share how they implemented the RICE Model for prioritisation across King’s product teams, impacting over 1,000 members. Discover how King Games transitioned from old-school methods to a value-driven approach, boosting transparency and streamlining delivery along the way.

FREE COMMUNITY EVENTS 

Check out more upcoming community events 

New Video Released This Week

Russ highlights the importance of three key factors for faster product outcomes: understanding design intent and requirements, managing changes and approvals efficiently, and accurately measuring adoption in production. He also discusses the challenges of integrating modern design systems with legacy technologies and offers practical solutions to streamline processes and enhance productivity. So much learning - and it’s free! 👇👇

Job of the Week

Lead Product Manager- Technical
Mastercard
📌 Dublin

About Mastercard
Mastercard facilitates transactions in over 210 countries and territories. The company leverages advanced technologies like AI, cybersecurity, and data analytics to provide cutting-edge services, enhancing the overall payment experience and driving financial inclusion.

See role details here

The Results of Last Week’s Poll

The question was: What city should UXDX EMEA move to in 2025?

Barcelona just pipped it in the voting with 29.79% of the vote. But Berlin (25.1%), Amsterdam (23.4%) and Stockholm (21.7%) were not that far behind. The comments were great with Barcelona being voted on for it’s sunshine and holiday vibes, Berlin for it’s culture and alternative vibe, Amsterdam for it international airport hub and chilled out vibes and Stockholm for that Scandinavian cool vibe.

Since we are not going to be announcing the city until the event in Dublin you should come along to see how we treat the poll - highlight it as amazing proof of our genius because it aligns with what we had already planned or write it off as unscientific because it doesn’t match our preconceived plans!

Either way it is going to be exciting. I guess you’ll have to be there in October to find out…