Journey to product teams (infographic)

At its core, Amplitude is designed for cross-functional product teams (and growth and marketing teams impacting the product experienc). We see our product as accelerating a virtuous cycle of learning, transparency, outcomes, alignment, and autonomy.

The journey to becoming a “real product team” (see Marty Cagan) is neverending, difficult, and non-linear, but making insights accessible directly to teams can have a far-reaching effect. Even teams that “ship” infrequently can benefit from reviewing outcomes and impact, as well as more deeply understanding the status-quo and current customer behavior.

In our workshops, we use the following image to describe different team structures and approaches to collaboration. The columns should be familiar: opportunity selection, requirements & planning, design, build, test, release, and run. What is important in this diagram are the mix of team boundaries, internal handoffs, external handoffs, and “loops” vs. linear delivery. Often, we shift from external handoffs to internal handoffs before tackling things in a truly cross-functional and iterative way. It is a journey.

To download a PDF of this image, click here.

Another helpful visualization is to overlay “Build, Measure, Learn” on top of the previous diagram.

What this overlay highlights is that isolating measurement from learning, or learning and measurement from building, can add additional “hops” for valuable feedback and information. This is big challenge for teams relying on a shared analytics team, or struggling under the pressure to ask perfect questions before starting “the work”. Amplitude lets teams explore new questions — the long tail of questions — without extra overhead. Ideally, we help bridge these silos.

These diagrams are meant to encourage conversations. Like all models, they are “wrong”. They are not meant to indicate maturity, or to imply that there is one right structure for all situations.