Definition (1):
Product –team structure involves specialists and functional managers to a new product, process, or project team that has the authority to make major decisions about their product. Team members are involved in most cases permanently.
Definition (2):
A product -team structure surrounds a product with the necessary professionals for rolling out the product. The staffs need to report to the product manager, with a secondary reporting to a functional manager. For example, in a software company, this structure refers to software developers, content writers, technical writers, graphic designers, IT engineers, marketing officers, and customer service representatives are all directly managed by a product manager. Here, the functional manager doesn’t possess direct authority over resources available to the product team and staff members.
A product -team structure is effective and efficient to get a product ready quickly or on time. Here, a single manager is in charge of the whole process. So, there are minimal chances of conflicts with other projects. The team is concentrated on the product rollout, and the manager removes obstacles from the path of the staff members.
If all the product team in the organization possess the same structure, the business has the risks of duplicating efforts on shared elements, generating inefficiencies. Again, individual contributors do not have the possibility of growth when they become skilled, which can result in increased turnover rates. These team structures increase the possibility of agency conflict too because team members concentrate on a specific product at the cost of the overall strategy for the organization.