The Two Types of Product Teams
To understand the transformative potential of empowered product teams, we must first recognize the fundamental distinction between the two prevailing models of product development:
Feature Teams: The Implementation Model
Feature teams operate as implementation units, focused on building predefined features according to specifications. Their core characteristics include:
- Roadmap-driven development: Work is defined by roadmaps consisting of features and projects
- Top-down requirements: Solutions are predetermined by executives, stakeholders, or product owners
- Delivery focus: Success is measured by meeting deadlines and shipping features
- Limited discovery: Little emphasis on validating whether features solve actual customer problems
- Sequential process: Requirements → Design → Development → Testing → Release
Feature teams typically operate in what Cagan calls "delivery mode"—focused on implementing solutions that have already been decided upon rather than discovering what solutions would work best.
The Feature Team Trap:
As Cagan notes, "Most companies have product teams in name only. In truth, they are just the modern name for what we used to call engineering teams... they are there to serve the business, typically as represented by the stakeholders. That is why I often call these teams 'mercenaries' rather than 'missionaries.'"
Empowered Product Teams: The Problem-Solving Model
In stark contrast, empowered product teams are given problems to solve rather than features to build. Their defining characteristics include:
- Outcome-driven development: Work is defined by business objectives and customer problems
- Solution authority: Teams determine the best solutions through customer discovery and testing
- Dual-track approach: Continuous discovery alongside delivery
- Cross-functional collaboration: Product, design, and engineering work in true partnership
- Results focus: Success is measured by business outcomes and customer value
Empowered teams operate in both "discovery mode" (figuring out what to build) and "delivery mode" (building it well). This dual focus allows them to develop solutions that are both valuable to customers and viable for the business.
The Empowered Team Advantage:
According to Cagan, "With empowered product teams, the work of the team is not to simply build what others tell them to build. The real work of the team is to solve hard problems for the business... When our product teams aren't collaborating with business leaders and stakeholders to identify and solve problems, we're just hurting ourselves."
The distinction between these two models isn't merely semantic—it represents fundamentally different approaches to innovation, with dramatically different outcomes for customers, businesses, and team members.
The Four Essential Ingredients of Empowered Teams
Building truly empowered product teams requires getting four critical elements right:
1. Team Structure: The Product Trio
Empowered teams are built around what Cagan calls "the product trio"—a close partnership between product management, product design, and engineering:
- Product Manager: Responsible for ensuring the team builds a product that is valuable (solves customer problems) and viable (works for the business)
- Product Designer: Responsible for ensuring the product is usable (customer can figure out how to use it) and desirable (customer wants to use it)
- Engineering Lead: Responsible for ensuring the product is feasible (can be built with available time, skills, and technology) and sustainable (can be maintained and scaled)
This trio collaborates closely throughout both discovery and delivery, with each bringing their unique perspective to problem-solving. Unlike feature teams where roles are often siloed and sequential, empowered teams work in true partnership.
The Power of the Product Trio:
"Each person in the trio brings a critical perspective to the problem. The best solutions almost always come from the intersection of these three perspectives—not from just one person's view. This is why strong product trios consistently outperform even the most brilliant individual contributors working alone."
Beyond the core trio, empowered teams include the engineers needed to build the product, while drawing on specialized expertise (data science, user research, content design, etc.) as needed.
2. Team Objectives: Outcomes Over Outputs
Perhaps the most defining characteristic of empowered teams is that they are measured by outcomes rather than outputs:
- Outputs are the features, products, and services the team produces
- Outcomes are the changes in customer or business behavior that create value
Output vs. Outcome Examples:
| Output (Feature Team) | Outcome (Empowered Team) |
|---|---|
| Launch new checkout flow | Increase conversion rate by 15% |
| Implement advanced search filters | Reduce time to find relevant content by 25% |
| Redesign onboarding process | Improve 30-day retention from 25% to 40% |
By focusing on outcomes, empowered teams gain the flexibility to determine the best solution for a given problem. They can experiment with different approaches, learn from failures, and pivot as needed—all while maintaining clear alignment with business objectives.
This outcome focus is typically implemented through OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) or similar frameworks that define what success looks like without prescribing how to achieve it.
3. Team Process: Continuous Discovery
Empowered teams engage in continuous product discovery alongside delivery. As defined by Teresa Torres and embraced by Cagan, continuous discovery means:
- Talking to customers at least weekly
- Testing product ideas before building
- Using evidence to inform decisions
- Sharing learning broadly across the organization
This continuous discovery process typically includes:
- Customer interviews to understand problems and needs
- Solution ideation with cross-functional collaboration
- Rapid prototyping to visualize potential solutions
- Concept testing with customers through interviews or usability studies
- Experimentation through A/B tests, fake door tests, or other techniques
- Data analysis to understand user behavior and measure success
By engaging in continuous discovery, teams can validate assumptions, reduce risk, and ensure they're building solutions that truly address customer needs and business objectives.
The Discovery Mindset:
"Strong teams know that the purpose of product discovery is to answer these four critical questions: Will the user choose to use this? Can the user figure out how to use this? Can we build this? Can our stakeholders support this?"
4. Team Culture: Leadership and Trust
The fourth essential ingredient is a culture of trust and true leadership. Empowered teams require:
- Product leadership that sets clear vision and strategy while empowering teams to determine solutions
- Trust from stakeholders to allow teams to determine the best approach to solving problems
- Safety to fail while learning from those failures
- Cross-functional respect among product managers, designers, and engineers
- Coaching rather than controlling management styles
This culture doesn't emerge spontaneously—it requires deliberate effort from executives, product leaders, and team members themselves. It also demands a willingness to hire strong talent and trust them to deliver results.
The Leadership Challenge:
"Leadership is about inspiring and enabling others to do their most important work. Notice that this is the opposite of telling them what to do. The managers of product teams need to be leaders, not order takers. If your managers simply collect requirements from stakeholders and pass them on to the team, then I guarantee you have weak managers."
These four ingredients—team structure, outcome-focused objectives, continuous discovery processes, and a culture of trust—form the foundation of empowered product teams. When all four are present, teams can consistently deliver products that solve real customer problems while achieving business objectives.
The Roadmap Reimagined
One of the most significant shifts when moving to empowered product teams is how we think about roadmaps. Traditional feature-based roadmaps become problematic because they:
- Commit to solutions before validating them
- Focus on outputs rather than outcomes
- Create artificial timelines that drive poor decision-making
- Limit teams' ability to respond to new information
For empowered teams, Cagan advocates for a different approach to roadmapping—one focused on communicating strategic intent and coordinating across teams without prematurely committing to specific solutions.
Outcome-Based Roadmaps
Instead of feature-based roadmaps, empowered teams use outcome-based roadmaps that:
- Focus on the problems to be solved and the outcomes to be achieved
- Communicate strategic intent without prescribing specific solutions
- Allow teams flexibility in how they achieve objectives
- Provide a framework for prioritization and resource allocation
Traditional vs. Outcome-Based Roadmap:
| Traditional Roadmap | Outcome-Based Roadmap |
|---|---|
| Q1: Implement saved searches Q2: Build advanced filtering Q3: Create personalized recommendations |
Q1-Q2: Improve content discovery (reduce time to find relevant content by 25%) Q2-Q3: Increase user engagement (raise average weekly sessions by 40%) |
This shift in roadmapping approach doesn't mean abandoning planning or coordination—rather, it means planning at the right level of abstraction and with the right focus.
Balancing Commitments and Flexibility
Empowered teams still need to make commitments for business planning, especially for items that require coordination across teams or external dependencies. Cagan suggests distinguishing between:
- Commitments: Things the team has high confidence they can deliver by a specific date
- Experiments: Things the team is actively exploring but can't yet commit to
This distinction allows teams to maintain both accountability and flexibility—making firm commitments where necessary while preserving space for learning and adaptation.
When implemented effectively, this reimagined approach to roadmapping provides the benefits of traditional roadmaps (alignment, coordination, communication) without their drawbacks (premature solution commitment, limited learning, reduced agility).
The Role of Product Leadership
Empowered product teams don't operate in a vacuum—they require strong product leadership to be effective. As Cagan emphasizes, the role of product leadership is to:
Define Product Vision and Strategy
Product leaders must provide clear direction through:
- Product vision: A compelling articulation of where the product is going and why it matters
- Product strategy: The approach for how the product will win in its market
- Product principles: The values and beliefs that guide decision-making
This strategic context helps teams understand the "why" behind their work and make better decisions within their area of responsibility.
Set Clear Objectives
Product leaders work with teams to define clear, measurable objectives that:
- Connect to business strategy and customer needs
- Provide focus for the team's discovery and delivery efforts
- Create accountability for outcomes rather than outputs
- Allow teams to determine the best path to success
These objectives typically take the form of OKRs or similar frameworks that define what success looks like without prescribing specific solutions.
Staff Strong Teams
Perhaps the most crucial responsibility of product leadership is building strong teams through:
- Hiring competent, collaborative product managers, designers, and engineers
- Creating balanced teams with complementary skills and perspectives
- Developing talent through coaching and growth opportunities
- Addressing performance issues promptly and directly
As Cagan often emphasizes, "The primary reason for failed product efforts is weak team members." Strong product leadership recognizes that team quality is the foundation of product success.
Coach Rather Than Control
Finally, product leaders must adopt a coaching approach that:
- Helps teams improve their discovery and delivery skills
- Provides guidance without prescribing solutions
- Asks probing questions rather than dictating answers
- Creates safety for teams to take risks and learn from failures
The Coaching Mindset:
"The product leader's job is not to have all the answers. It's to ask the right questions and help the team arrive at the best answers. It's about coaching, not controlling. Telling your teams what to build is not leadership—it's the opposite."
This coaching approach requires product leaders to resist the temptation to provide solutions, even when they believe they know the answer. By focusing on developing team capabilities rather than controlling outcomes, leaders build sustainable product organizations.
Transforming Your Organization
Moving from feature teams to empowered product teams isn't a simple process—it requires significant changes in structure, process, leadership, and culture. Based on Cagan's work with numerous organizations, here are the key steps in this transformation:
1. Start with Leadership Alignment
The transformation must begin with executive and leadership alignment on:
- Why empowered teams matter for business outcomes
- What changes will be required across the organization
- How leaders' roles will evolve in the new model
- The timeline and approach for transformation
Without this alignment, efforts to empower teams will inevitably encounter resistance and reversion to old patterns.
2. Restructure Around Product Teams
Next, restructure the organization around durable, cross-functional product teams that:
- Own a specific customer experience or business capability
- Include product management, design, and engineering in close collaboration
- Stay together long enough to develop deep domain expertise
- Have end-to-end responsibility for outcomes in their area
This structural change often requires breaking down traditional functional silos and redefining reporting relationships.
3. Redefine Planning and Prioritization
Transform planning and prioritization processes to:
- Focus on outcomes rather than outputs
- Give teams problems to solve rather than features to build
- Implement outcome-based roadmaps rather than feature roadmaps
- Create space for discovery alongside delivery
This shift typically requires new planning cadences, tools, and templates that support outcome-focused work.
4. Develop Discovery Capabilities
Build the organization's product discovery capabilities through:
- Training in discovery techniques (customer interviews, prototyping, testing)
- Establishing regular customer contact for all team members
- Creating processes for rapid experimentation and learning
- Investing in tools and infrastructure that support discovery
This capability development is essential for teams to effectively leverage their new autonomy.
5. Evolve Success Metrics
Reimagine how success is measured and rewarded:
- Shift from delivery metrics (velocity, story points) to outcome metrics (business and customer impact)
- Recognize and celebrate learning and adaptation, not just execution
- Create feedback loops that connect team actions to customer and business outcomes
- Align incentives with desired behaviors and outcomes
This evolution in metrics helps reinforce the shift from output to outcome focus.
6. Invest in Coaching and Development
Finally, build a coaching and development ecosystem that:
- Helps product managers, designers, and engineers develop new skills
- Transforms managers into coaches rather than controllers
- Creates communities of practice for sharing learning
- Provides access to external expertise and best practices
This investment in people development is critical for sustaining the transformation over time.
The Transformation Journey:
"Transforming to empowered product teams is not a quick fix. It's a journey that typically takes 1-2 years to complete, with continuous improvement beyond that. The key is to approach it as a product—starting with a clear vision, testing and learning along the way, and adapting based on what works in your specific context."
Organizations that successfully navigate this transformation journey gain a significant competitive advantage—the ability to consistently deliver products that solve real customer problems while achieving business objectives.
Case Study: TransformCo's Journey to Empowered Teams
To illustrate what this transformation looks like in practice, let's examine TransformCo, a B2B SaaS company that successfully shifted from feature teams to empowered product teams over an 18-month period.
Starting Point
TransformCo began with a classic feature team structure:
- Roadmaps defined by executives and stakeholders
- Product managers focused on requirements and project management
- Designers brought in after requirements were set
- Engineers implementing pre-defined solutions
- Limited customer interaction outside of sales contexts
While the company was profitable, it struggled with slow innovation, missed market opportunities, and increasing competitive pressure.
The Transformation
TransformCo's journey to empowered teams included several key milestones:
Phase 1: Leadership Alignment (Months 1-3)
- Executive workshop on empowered product teams
- Leadership book club studying Cagan's "Inspired" and "Empowered"
- Company-wide vision for product development approach
- Executive sponsor identified and transformation team formed
Phase 2: Pilot Team Launch (Months 3-6)
- One product team restructured as an empowered team
- Training in discovery methods and outcome-based planning
- Weekly customer interviews instituted
- OKRs implemented for team objectives
- Coaching support provided to team members and stakeholders
Phase 3: Expansion and Capability Building (Months 6-12)
- Three additional teams converted to empowered structure
- Discovery training expanded across organization
- Outcome-based roadmap format introduced
- Product trio roles redefined and hiring for key gaps
- Success metrics shifted from outputs to outcomes
Phase 4: Full Transformation (Months 12-18)
- All remaining teams converted to empowered structure
- Quarterly business reviews focused on outcomes achieved
- Communities of practice established for ongoing learning
- Leadership coaching program implemented
- New planning and coordination mechanisms implemented
Results
TransformCo's transformation yielded significant results:
- Business impact: Revenue growth increased from 15% to 30% year-over-year
- Customer metrics: NPS improved from +20 to +45
- Innovation speed: Time from idea to validated solution reduced by 60%
- Team engagement: Employee satisfaction scores increased by 35%
- Market perception: Industry analysts recognized TransformCo as an innovation leader
Key Success Factors
TransformCo's experience highlighted several critical success factors:
- Executive sponsorship: Active support from the CEO and executive team
- Pilot approach: Starting small and expanding based on success
- Capability building: Significant investment in training and coaching
- Patience: Recognition that transformation takes time and persistence
- Measurement: Clear metrics to demonstrate the value of the new approach
TransformCo's journey illustrates that while the transformation to empowered teams requires significant effort, the results—in terms of business outcomes, customer value, and team engagement—justify the investment.