(2021-04-27) Cagan Product Vs Project Teams

Martin Cagan: Product Teams vs Project Teams. I should have written this article two years ago, just after I published Product vs. Feature Teams. ((2019-08-29) Cagan Product Vs Feature Teams)

I really wanted to believe that it was no longer necessary to continue to make the argument that project teams are bad.

Unfortunately, wishful thinking doesn’t change reality.

It’s not that I haven’t written about the problems with project teams, it’s just that those articles are more than ten years old, and I really wanted to believe we were past that.

the difference between a product and project team is essentially about ownership. The difference between a team taking responsibility for an outcome, versus a team just there to deliver a project (output), and then move on to something else.

The biggest myth surrounding project teams is that this is somehow more efficient because every engineer is “fully utilized” on the most important project at the time.

If you’re working on something trivial, such as building brochure web sites, then sure. But I have never worked with a single company building trivial things. Tech product companies build things that are anything but trivial.

The concept that any engineer or designer or product manager can easily and instantly switch between major areas and be expected to innovate defies reality and goes way beyond wishful thinking.

And that’s just talking about velocity. Things get even worse if you try to talk about actually creating something of real value, not to mention innovating on behalf of your customer.

These deficiencies are long established and well known. So why in the world do so many companies still use project teams?

The main reason is that project teams are part and parcel of the IT culture. Remember that the defining characteristic of IT is treating technology as a cost center.

this leads to epic amounts of waste, and more importantly, makes the company ripe for disruption.