Well written about how to build highly effective product teams. You may have read Marty Cagan’s book (which we read) and dozens of other articles. Even following his industry best practices when setting up product teams, he cannot build two teams in exactly the same way. Teams are made up of individuals, and the sum of these individuals makes each team unique. We at Starship are no exception.
Our product team has multiple product groups focused on key pillars of our business, such as consumer experience and autonomous systems. Each team has the competencies and skills needed to bring products from idea to customer acceptance to business impact, including product management, product design, data science, and engineering.
Teams function better when clear roles and responsibilities are established across the team and each role is filled by someone who is proficient in that role. This is the basic concept of teamwork, collective groups can accomplish more than each person working individually. Because the work has to be divided up to make that possible, it is better to assign the work to someone who has the skills to do it, or assign it to someone who doesn’t have the necessary skills. is more efficient than
When hiring for product teams, look for required skills, plus cultural add and value fit. Every new person who joins us adds something or celebrates our culture.It makes the team unique and one of a kind. If you’re thinking of jumping on board (pun intended!) and joining the Starship product team, here are some things you might want to know about how we work.
Ultimate Ownership and Trust
As a team and as individuals, we take full responsibility for our work and what happens. This means that everyone takes action to get the information they need to do their job and actively try to solve the problems they are given. We ask, seek, and find, rather than waiting for someone to hand us everything. Yes, sometimes it fails too. In such situations, we do not blame others for our failures, but ourselves. One of our values is that we learn along the way.
professional maturity
Professional maturity is the ability to respect diverse cultural backgrounds and workplace experiences. Our team consists of 12 different nationalities from 4 continents, working in teams spread across Helsinki, Tallinn and London. We respect each other and accept that we are different. That’s what makes us special. Having so many different cultures on one team can create conflicting situations. We approach these situations with a compassionate rather than a judgmental attitude as a source of true team values.
fit for purpose
Being a group of experienced people who are really good at what they do means we want to do what we do really well. We want our customers and partners to have the best possible experience. would like to provide We want to make our products as good as possible — make them perfect.
But the problem with perfectionism is that it can slow us down and miss opportunities for our teams to bring value in new ways. You can’t quickly learn how to make things better by just releasing them in perfect condition. Therefore, we try not to make perfection better. So we aim for perfection, but don’t let that get in the way of releasing something great.
Commit if you disagree
We believe that good ideas come from everyone. And we want the best ideas to flourish, regardless of where they come from. This means working constructively with people with diverse skills and perspectives and maintaining inclusive and rigorous decision-making.
Once the options are exhausted, a decision will be made. We embrace the concept of constructive debate and questioning, but when decisions are made we all rally on our chosen path. We embody the principles of disagreement and commitment .
believe in making a difference
Many of us joined Starship because we thought it would be cool to work with robots. And it really is. But the common value we all share is that we truly believe we can make a difference. Tomorrow, we believe we can make a positive impact by solving the last mile problem by developing today’s delivery services. We all want Starship to be successful and make the last mile the greenest mile.
Building tomorrow’s delivery service is no small feat. The challenges we face are complex and multifaceted. This complexity increases when you work at the intersection of physical and digital products and systems. As a product team, we aim to take extraordinary technological achievements and transform them into services people cannot live without. We aim to inspire merchants with local sales channels. In parallel, we are working to enable operations teams to deliver high quality, efficiency, and everyday magic with self-driving robots.
Do these challenges sound your way? Great, we’re looking for very talented people. Find your next career here.
