How to Build a Strong Digital Product Team: Hiring and Retention Strategies

The inception and development of digital products, such as websites, applications, and e-commerce platforms, are commonly ascribed to the domain of information technology. However, this process encompasses much more than a team of developers applying their coding expertise or a project manager supervising the final delivery. It involves a multitude of elements beyond these surface-level components.

In the realm of digital product design and development, success relies on the harmonious collaboration of a team with diverse strategic and technical skills, akin to an orchestra. The absence of any personnel or skillset may result in a lengthier timeframe, increased costs and ultimately, project failure.

What is a digital product team?

Before launching headfirst into building your dream team, you’ll need to understand exactly what a high-performing digital product team looks like. As with many areas of digital, this will vary depending on your company type and size, your customer base, and your product portfolio. Having said this, typically, there are six key functions to take into account, functions that are endorsed by many leading global brands:

• Product management

• Project management

• UX design

• UI design

• Product development

• Quality assurance

Let’s delve into what each function entails, the roles they map to, and the responsibilities and skills they cover.

Product managers

They play a pivotal role in the development and success of digital products, encompassing several key areas, including:

• Defining the product vision

• Setting strategic goals

• Leading the design of a strategy

• Creating a roadmap

• Gathering and analysing market research and customer feedback on a continuous basis

Digital product managers should possess strong communication, leadership, and project management skills, alongside strategic thinking and product strategy expertise. They excel in product lifecycle management and are adept at cross-functional collaboration. Additionally, a deep understanding of technology, user experience, market dynamics, analytical thinking, and a customer-centric mindset are also essential to empower them to make informed decisions.

Project managers

They are responsible for the development and launch of digital products and services. Their responsibilities include a wide range of tasks:

• Defining project objectives

• Managing project timelines

• Communicating with stakeholders and coordinating cross-functional teams

Effective communication, change management and stakeholder engagement skills are vital for project managers. They should also be proficient in agile methodologies and project management tools, as well as analytical thinking and problem-solving to facilitate iterative development and achieve on-time project delivery.

UX designers

Their responsibilities span various key areas:

• Researching and understanding the needs and wants of users

• Defining and enhancing user experiences,

• Communicating with stakeholders to translate user needs into design solutions

• Creating user interface wireframes and prototypes

• Ensuring the alignment of design with project objectives

UX designers excel in user-centred design, prototyping, and usability testing. Their attention to detail, problem-solving abilities and strong analytical thinking help craft intuitive and visually appealing digital experiences.

UI designers

UI designs are visual fate keeps when it comes to digital product design, they are responsible for:

• Creating visually appealing, user-friendly interfaces that enhance user interaction

• Conceptualising and crafting the layout, colour schemes, typography, and overall aesthetics

• Aligning design with functionality

Proficiency in design software, such as Adobe Creative Suite, Figma, or Sketch, is paramount for UI designers. A keen eye for detail, coupled with an innate ability to stay current with evolving design trends, is essential. Effective communication skills are vital as well; UI designers must adeptly articulate their design concepts, fostering effective collaboration with both the development team and stakeholders. UI designers serve as the linchpin, translating creative ideas into visually captivating, user-centric digital interfaces.

Product developers

Front-end and back-end developers are the backbone of digital product development, their responsibilities are closely intertwined yet distinct.

Front-end developers concentrate on perfecting the user interface, ensuring a smooth and visually enticing user experience, translating design mock-ups into responsive web pages, creating interactive elements using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and optimising performance for various devices.

Back-end developers operate behind the scenes, constructing server-side logic, designing databases, and crafting the application’s architecture. They are responsible for data storage, security, and the core functionality of the digital product. Typically, they wield programming languages such as Python, Ruby, or Java and work with databases like MySQL or MongoDB.

Quality assurance engineers

They are responsible for ensuring the reliability and excellence of the final product. Their core duty involves the rigorous evaluation of all facets of the digital product:

• Identifying defects, discrepancies and performance concerns

• Crafting and implementing exhaustive test plans

• Generating test cases

• Conducting thorough assessments

QA engineers need strong analytical and problem-solving skills, meticulous attention to detail, and a deep understanding of testing methodologies and tools. Effective communication is crucial for reporting issues to the development team and collaborating on bug fixes. Their contributions play a pivotal role in delivering a seamless and high-quality digital product to end-users.

Diverse perspectives

In addition to the core digital product team, the practice of incorporating diverse perspectives is not just a recommendation but a strategic imperative in today’s complex digital landscape. It involves seeking input from various stakeholders, both internal and external, to ensure that the product aligns with a broader vision and addresses multifaceted challenges.

Customers

The needs and experiences of customers wield a direct and profound influence on the product’s overall success. Understanding their pain points, desires, and preferences is not just beneficial but rather a critical factor in ensuring a product’s viability and relevance. By tailoring the product to align with these insights, it becomes more attuned to user requirements, resulting in heightened user satisfaction, increased adoption rates, and enhanced customer loyalty.

Marketing team

They provide crucial insights into market trends, competition, and how audiences behave. Their input guides decisions on where the product should stand in the market, how to communicate effectively, and which audience to target. This ensures that the product aligns perfectly with its intended market, resonating with the right people and meeting their needs.

Sales team

Their contributions are highly valuable, offering keen insights into market demand and customer expectations. These insights are pivotal in refining product features and pricing strategies, resulting in an optimised product-market fit and increased competitiveness. By collaborating closely with sales teams, product development benefits from a better understanding of the market landscape, helping to deliver a product that perfectly aligns with customer needs and stands out in a competitive marketplace.

Operation team

The significance of their role becomes evident in ensuring that the product can be manufactured, delivered, and maintained with maximum efficiency. This, in turn, leads to cost reduction and an overall improvement in product quality. Collaborating closely with operations teams is instrumental in streamlining the entire product lifecycle, from conception to delivery, fostering cost-effectiveness and enhancing the product’s overall quality.

How do you structure a digital product team?

High-performing team structures always start with a clear digital product strategy. This informs your team structure and ensures that the vision and mission behind the strategy are crystal clear for everyone involved.

In terms of the structure itself, there are a number of options available. We’ve listed six of them below, along with the main advantages and disadvantages of each.

Functional oriented structure

These are structured by job functions or titles, as outlined in the table above.

• Pro – you get clear reporting lines and a focus on specific subject-matter expertise.

• Con – you may create silos and subsequently get alignment issues.

Cross-functional oriented structure

These are typically organised around specific products, with each team including members from the different job function areas above.

• Pro – this structure promotes collaboration and can enable faster decision-making.

• Con – it can be complex to oversee and present resource allocation challenges.

Matrix or hybrid oriented structure

Matrix or hybrid teams are where team members report to both their functional manager and a product or project manager.

• Pro – flexible structure with resources shared across projects.

• Con – this structure can throw up role ambiguity and the potential competing priorities.

User oriented structure

Here, teams are organised by customer segment or journey stage.

• Pro – this structure is great for companies with diverse product portfolios and many different audiences.

• Con – it can create duplication of effort and competing priorities.

Feature oriented structure

These are usually organised around specific product features or components.

• Pro – decentralised decision-making can enable faster development cycles and go-to-market times.

• Con –  there’s a risk of duplication of effort and it can be complex to manage across multiple teams.

Tribes, squads and chapters oriented structure (the Spotify model)

A tribe is a group of team members focused on a broad area of responsibility. Tribes consist of cross-functional squads responsible for specific products or features, and these are supported by chapters of individuals with similar expertise areas.

• Pro – it’s perfectly designed for scalability and also fosters knowledge sharing.

• Con – this structure can be complex to manage and lead to resource constraints.

Don’t forget when considering the best structure for your team that it is often dictated by your chosen development methodology, e.g., Agile, Scrum, etc.

But remember – regardless of the structure and methodology you choose, clear communications, team collaboration and a strong customer focus are always key.

How do you build a digital product team?

You’ve got your team in place, the structure sorted, and a clear strategy communicated – congratulations! But the work doesn’t stop there. To ensure your digital product team continues to operate at a high-performing level, you’ll need to maintain and develop it. Think of your team like any high-performance car – it needs ongoing maintenance, care and attention to keep it at its peak!

With that in mind, here are the top strategies we see leading, global brands leverage to maintain a high-performing digital product team.

• Focus on hiring – make sure you put due time, care and attention into any new hiring you do for your digital product team. The key here is to ensure a variety of disciplines are covered and that you set the team up for future knowledge and skills sharing.

• Be open to non-traditional work histories and experience – the world of work is changing rapidly – and that means an even greater opportunity for companies to tap into skills and experience they may not have seen before. In building your team, ensure you create a culture of diversity by hiring people with non-traditional backgrounds – it’s a strategy that will often help from a customer perspective too as a diverse team will represent your customer base better.

• Codify internal processes – don’t let all that great team knowledge go to waste! Ensure you document and codify all your processes from day one so that process efficiencies can be made and replicated over time, and so that new hires can get up to speed quickly too.

• Invest in skills development – just as you top your car up with fuel every week, make sure you’re investing in your team regularly. Assign a quarterly budget allocation for team members to invest in their own skills, making sure you set aside time each week or month for people to take advantage of this opportunity.

• Identify the right performance evaluation tools – there is a plethora of performance evaluation tools out there – from methods to follow, to software and apps to use. Whichever you opt for, ensure you’re tracking performance clearly and transparently, and in line with your overall digital product strategy.

• Set a culture of collaboration and skills sharing – skills development doesn’t just come from training and courses – team members can also share skills amongst themselves. You can support this by encouraging cross-functional working, enabling skills- and knowledge-sharing sessions, and even by looking to specific tools and software to facilitate this.

How do you lead a high-performing digital product team?

We’ve spoken with a number of digital product execs that we work with here at Adrenalin. Here are their top tips for leading a high-performing digital product team:

• Model what great leadership looks like – in other words, lead by example!

• Communicate effectively and regularly. It might sound cliché, but it does work.

• Share the vision, frequently. Make it a part of monthly meetings and highlight a different part of the vision each month.

• Avoid micromanaging. Instead, set up the right working methodologies to empower your team and enable successful (and fast) decision-making.

• Don’t forget to reward and call out great work. Working in the digital product space can be challenging and stressful at times, so remind your team members that they’re doing a great job.

An example of a high-performing digital product team

Building a strong digital product team requires a lot of hard work and patience. But you can take inspiration from leading brands that have done it successfully and reaped the benefits!

Just take the LEGO Group as an example. Recognising that talent was their most important asset, LEGO created what was known internally as a ‘talent factory’. (McKinsey describes a similar approach here for the ‘Digital Factory’). In addition, they ensured that each business domain had an exec sponsor, and the purpose and end vision of their digital transformation journey were communicated clearly from the beginning. As a result, they ended up doubling their number of systems and software engineers, creating opportunities for the entire team to work on cutting-edge tech, and providing them with attractive career path options and skills-building routes.

If this still all feels like a gargantuan task, then don’t worry, you don’t have to do it alone! You can leverage external expertise in the form of experienced digital agencies and experts who have the methodologies, tools and processes ready to deploy in a matter of days. This approach has a distinct advantage over trying to do it all in-house in that you get an objective perspective on where you need to focus and can plug any skills gaps you may have internally.

The primary objective of any digital product team is to align with business objectives by meeting users’ needs and delivering value. If you’re serious about building a high-performing digital product team, but need help getting started, then get in touch with the Adrenalin team.

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