Deciding the Skill Mix and Roles for a Product Team You Lead

As a product manager, how do you decide what mix of skills, experience and roles your team should have? ```hint Work backward from the charter Before naming roles, ask what the team has to deliver over the next few quarters and which capabilities that work depends on, then hold that list up against the people you already have. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Is this about product managers who report to me, or the cross-functional group of engineers, designers and analysts I work with, whose hiring I influence but do not own? - Am I staffing a new team from scratch or reshaping one that already exists? - Is headcount fixed, or should I also make the case for how many people the team needs? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - Tying the needed capabilities to the team's charter and roadmap rather than to job titles - An honest assessment of current strengths, gaps and single points of failure - How the candidate balances deep specialists against generalists, seniority levels and ways of thinking - How people's career goals and the organization's changing needs reshape the mix over time - A real example of a staffing decision, how it was made with the partner managers, and how it turned out ### Follow-up Questions - You have one open role and two finalists: a specialist who fills your biggest gap and a generalist who is stronger overall. Whom do you choose, and why? - How would your plan change if the team moved from improving a mature product to building a new one? - How do you keep the team from becoming a group of people who all think alike?