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Why designers should be embedded into product teams and what that even means
Operating “like an internal agency” is rarely the ideal.
Consider these two schools of thought for how a product company might structure its teams:
#1 — Project Teams
In a project organization, individuals from different departments are assigned temporarily to projects. Members work together temporarily to complete their work, usually in anticipation of a pre-determined deadline. Individuals may work on multiple projects at a time.
#2 — Product Teams
In a product-based organization, designers are distributed into product teams. These teams — sometimes “pods”, “squads” or “scrum teams” — support a particular product or product area indefinitely. They exist independently of organizational silos and have minimal dependencies on others from outside of the team. Product teams tend to be more conceptually aligned with agile practices.
Reality doesn’t always break down cleanly into one of these two categories, but it’s still a useful dichotomy.
Now, let’s say that you’re a designer in an organization that already has partial product teams.
