Here’s What Product Organization Really Means

Wanna know what product organization means? Tune in to find out.

What Product Organization Means

When we say product organization, it refers to the structure that an organization uses to develop, manage, and promote a product or service. It is essential for an organization to have a product organization that aligns with the business objectives.

Product organization refers to how an organization organizes its resources to develop, promote, and sell products or services. 

There are different types of organizational structures in product development. But, most organizations follow the traditional departmental structure. This is what we’ll cover first.

Product Development Departmental Structure

The traditional departmental structure defines the company’s organization by separating it into departments. 

This structure follows a rigid hierarchy and divides functional areas of the business into individual departments.

The marketing department is responsible for generating leads and sales. On the other hand, the product development department works with the engineering team to create and develop the product or service. 

The operations department takes care of various operational tasks such as production, planning, and supporting the sales team. While the customer service department deals with customer complaints and feedback. 

Each department has a clear-cut role and responsibility for certain tasks.

This structure works well for large companies that have a lot of employees and complex products that need to be developed.

The Matrix Organization Structure

In a matrix organization structure, each employee has multiple job roles across different departments. This allows organizations to take advantage of the skills of each employee across different functional areas of the business.

In this structure, employees report to multiple managers from different departments. This type of structure is mostly used by large organizations.

For one thing, it requires a lot of communication among employees from different departments to ensure that everyone is working toward a common goal.

This structure helps an organization manage its resources more effectively. And it works by allowing cross-functional communication between different business functions such as marketing, product development, operations, etc.

So, they can work together towards a common goal instead of being siloed in their own functional departments. In this way, communication becomes easier.

The Parallelogram Organization Structure

This is another structure that works well for large organizations. It’s also known as the virtual matrix structure. 

It has similar characteristics to the matrix organization structure. But, it’s different in many ways.

In this structure, each employee has multiple job roles across multiple departments. The difference is that employees report to a single manager. And managers are responsible for only one functional area of the business.

For instance, an employee may report to a manager who’s responsible for the product development department. 

But, this employee could also work with other departments such as marketing or operations. And they all report to the same manager in the product development department. 

The advantage of this structure is that it allows departments to work closer together while maintaining clear boundaries between them. 

This way, it’s easier for everyone to understand what other departments are working on and how they are contributing to the overall business goals. 

The Bottom Line

So, how can your organization use these different structures? Well, the traditional departmental structure is best for large companies.

On the other hand, matrix and parallelogram organization structures are best for small businesses.

But, they all must work together towards a common goal. This is what it means when you talk about product organization.