Product vs. Project Teams - Silicon Valley Product Group

As some organizations move to more autonomous teams and agile practices, the link can be lost between executives’ desired customer value and the delivery of the work. The autonomous team relies heavily on the role of product as the “glue” that brings diverse perspectives together and aligns them with the portfolio team and customer expectations.

what is each team responsible for? One dimension of this is the type of work to be done,

Product teams complain that they don't understand the big picture—they don't see how their work contributes to the larger goals, and they're struggling with what it means to be an empowered, autonomous team.

Autonomous teams should work toward assigned customer value outcomes, rather than being assigned tasks. What to work on is, generally, given to the team through the prioritization of initiatives in the LVT and the backlog. The team, which should include a product person, collaboratively prioritizes what it will work on during the next iteration to

Remember that one of the most important traits of product teams is that we want teams of missionaries and not teams of mercenaries. This leads directly to the concepts of ownership and autonomy. A team should feel empowered, yet accountable

But for many efforts, this is decidedly not the case, and some framing and true problem solving becomes critically important. Big projects—and, especially, initiatives (projects spanning multiple teams)—are common examples.