Stereotypically, Product and Engineering teams share a deep bond that consists of both the good and the bad. It’s essential to emphasize the importance of good relationships and a great organizational structure for these two synergistic departments in a product company. As in a marital union, there are often disagreements, but it’s as clear as day – one cannot do without the other. They are two sides of the same coin.
The Product team represents a vision, while the Engineering team represents a mission. However, both share the same goal – in Lemax’s case, transforming the travel industry.
Many business experts feel that bringing these two teams together may produce extraordinary results. At Lemax, we did precisely that. Take a glimpse at the structure of our Product and Engineering Teams.
The Importance of Good Team Structure in a Product Company
The Product and Engineering department is responsible for the product’s design, development, testing, deployment, and maintenance. At the same time, they are responsible for all the infrastructure on which the product is deployed and the internal infrastructure in the offices.
The Product Team seeks to understand the travel industry’s challenges and converts them into software solutions by acting as the primary liaison to the development team. They are responsible for market research, participation in pre-sales solutioning, customer onboarding, participation in care and retention, requirements analysis, functional specifications, internal development support, API and Integration external support, acceptance testing, incident and problem management, roadmap and delivery planning, usage enablement, etc.
The Engineering Team is inspired and motivated by the intellectual challenge of developing, scaling, and maintaining one product while developing original ideas in-house. They are responsible for designing and developing solutions, implementing integrations, building highly distributed architecture, writing API tests and unit tests, etc.
With the company entering into expansion, it was necessary to gather many new resources for the teams. The need for a new organizational structure appeared, and we divided our Product and Engineering Team into:
- Product Management Team,
- Engineering Teams,
- Infrastructure and Deliveries Team.
How Does it Work?
The Product Team consists of Product Managers and Product Operations.
Product Managers have the indispensable role of creating, leading, and coordinating teams to turn the company mission into reality. They are responsible for backlog ownership, cross-functional collaboration with various stakeholders, translation of product maps into well-defined products, and insurance of quality, among other exciting things.
The purpose of the Product Operations role is to drive alignment and execution of product development activities across the whole organization. The end goal is to release product updates to the market. Among other things, they are responsible for preparing quarterly product development plans, monitoring, controlling, and reporting the execution of the delivery plan, managing tools to support daily work in the Product and Engineering department, and process changes.
The Engineering Teams consist of the Core Platform Team, Stability Team, and Features Team.
The Core Platform Team, internally known as Goni Pony, works on reliably delivering high-quality Lemax products. By doing so, they spearhead the new ways of product engineering in Lemax. They take care of the Lemax platform, development standards, and guidelines. They also develop software on all Lemax products and are responsible for technical consultancy.
The Stability Team, also called First Aid, aims to support our clients by providing system stability. They are responsible for resolving application incidents/problems that require technical knowledge, improving product stability, and tracking and improving incident management over time.
The Features Team, known as Veto, has a mission to create the highest quality product that promotes the growth of Lemax clients. They are working on improving the development of one existing product. At the same time, they are responsible for making a delivery plan, taking care of the product’s functionality and supporting documentation, and making requirement analyses and consultations for other development and non-development teams.
The infrastructure and Deliveries Team consists of Infrastructure Team, Quality Assurance Team, and Delivery Team.
The Infrastructure Team takes care of continuous stability and sustainability upgrades. Their aim is to ensure high-quality infrastructure that adheres to strict security standards and is easy to maintain.
The Quality Assurance Team is responsible for the verification and validation of all product deliverables before release and support for all issues or inquiries related to the product.
The Delivery Team is responsible for product deployment, planning of releases, removing any impediments that may slow the release of the version, and responding to any release-related and engineering process-related inquiries.
Leaving a Footprint
Product and Engineering are more than just a feature factory in a product company – they are co-owners of the product experience. They need to think broadly to understand the value and importance of what they are producing. Every team has its own specific goals that ultimately lead to a shared bigger one.
In Lemax they are working on a product that is transforming the tourism industry and are developing a complex enterprise product. Lemax is leading the global change and these teams are responsible for that. Lemax is just a place; the change comes from its people.
Every day is a new adventure and an opportunity to change the world for the better. They grow professionally through the process, and each team has its forces that will help achieve the company’s goals. From our experience, all we can say is – don’t build the product if you haven’t built the team(s) first.
