Who defines the scope? It may sound like a simple question but it is not.
Is it a customer, a CEO, a board of directors, an operations team, sales, or an investor?
As an organization matures, the complexity lies within the intricate web of your organizational chart. The mission statement serves as the guiding light, but with such a diverse set of stakeholders, it becomes challenging to determine who holds the authority to make decisions regarding scope definition.
As someone who lives within the intersection of these cross-functional teams, I find myself dancing between various perspectives. As the owner of a domain within an organization, the distinction between the decisions I am permitted to make and those that belong to someone else becomes increasingly blurred over time. I have learned when to step in versus when to punt.
However, when you delegate decision-making, you risk frustrating your customers. How many times have you heard, “We are a customer-driven organization?” But you don’t see this reflected into your day-to-day when there are a lack of decisions.
A common management error I observe is placing excessive reliance on OKRs to make decisions. While reviewing them is commendable, if your organization lacks a data-centric approach, you may lack the necessary insights to determine the next course of action. Furthermore, if you’re measuring the wrong metrics, you might inadvertently drive the wrong solution. Consequently, management resorts to increasing the creation and collection of metrics to boost their confidence before making any decisions.
All customers wanted was a self-service option to remove their email address from the application, eliminating the need to continue calling the 1-800 number. Instead of addressing this straightforward issue, we introduced more metrics and OKRs.
This brings me back to the question of who owns the scope? Let's answer this by breaking down between a start-up versus a large organization.
If you are a seed-stage startup without a product market fit, then a founder should own the product scope as this individual is close to the vision and the survival of the company depends on it.
However, if you are a startup with a product market fit, you need to consider trade-offs when deciding what’s crucial for the next stage. If customer acquisition is your focus, the founder should prioritize hiring the talent and outsource the product responsibility to someone else. For instance, Marissa Mayer, Google’s 22nd employee, took on product management while Larry Page and Sergey Brin focused on key priorities to propel Google to the next level.
If your startup is product-led, growth is dependent on the features you ship, it pays for the founder or CEO to own the product scope and delegate non-essential responsibilities to others. For instance, Brian Chesky at Airbnb drives the product vision and scope from the top. Although he may not be involved in every aspect of decision-making, it is evident who sets the scope for the organization. And based on his priorities, resources and team structures are set accordingly.
A few of these startups will eventually evolve into large and complex organizations. During quarterly town halls, everyone comprehends the north star message from management, but when it’s time to plan, they encounter dependency challenges. There is no cohesion, and progress is slow. You feel nostalgic about the days when you would ship features fast. That guiding principle shared by the executive team during a town hall quickly evaporates. Customers are already forgotten, and you find yourself entangled in the complexities of the organization.
To diagnose this problem, you need to understand your organizational structure. Management shared the north star is A during all hands. However, Squad B believes it is A + B, Squad C believes it is A + C, and Squad D believes it is A + B + D. Regardless of how big or small these teams are, no one is ever aligned. Planning sessions are painful. In my observation, there is another management error—relying solely on all hands for projects to be delivered.
Organization communication is as critical as the organizational structure because you ship your product organization.
Squads are designed based on the organization’s objectives. If you create an organizational chart that focuses on the main objectives, your organization can focus on making meaningful and purposeful decisions. Small, symmetrical and proportional teams (1 UX for every 3 engineers) with OKRs are not the solutions. Instead, it’s your organizational structure strategy that needs to be aligned with your all hands message so teams can deliver on promises made to customers. You need teams that focus on the main thing. You can outsource maintenance and non-essential operations to smaller teams, and that becomes their primary focus.
Over-provisioning your most important team and empowering them with decision-making authority will automatically drive scope ownership. The key question for this team should be—“What is the primary objective that a team should deliver where argument over scope or lack of decisions are not in conversation during planning and execution?” This approach ensures that you maintain a high-quality standard and ship the most valuable features to your customers.
So back to who owns the scope? The size of your company will certainly influence your answer. Regardless of the size, it is crucial to understand your core purpose that drives the organizational structure. If you get your organizational structure right, you will drive the impact for your customers. Scope ownership is paramount if your organization is serious about execution.
A symmetrical chart is not the desired outcome for your customers. They are not interested in your OKRs; they want solutions that make their lives easier so they can continue their relationship with your organization.