POM for IT – product map and taxonomy

Taxonomy

Name	Definition	Example
Product group	The high level product clustering that sits over product teams and is generally aligned to a business group. A product group will have Group PM that manages the business stakeholders aligned to products within the group and identifies appropriate product.	HR, Finance, Sales
Product	A product enables a capability or portion of a capability, through technology, business process, and customer experience, with a continuous value stream and an ability to measure success independently.	Core financials, talent acquisition
Platform	Some products are more vertical business capabilities, while other products are more horizontal platforms that may enable multiple business capabilities. Despite some differences in the type and scope of the products, the overall management and execution of the product remains similar to core business facing products. There may be enterprise-wide platforms, cross-domain platforms and/or domain-level platforms which enable other business capabilities.	Enterprise platform (automation, identity and access management)
Shared service	These are products that acts more as a shared service to our business facing products. They are similar to other IT products in that they: Will have product owners responsible for establishing the vision for the product Will follow a similar product lifecycle (develop vision → execute → incorporate customer feedback → rinse & repeat) Shared services teams are different from IT product teams in that: Their stakeholders are typically IT or end-users (employees) as opposed to core business functions They often deliver value of a consultative nature (e.g. strategy, architecture, M&A) rather than through the act of building technology products (but some may build technology products)	Architecture, M&A, strategy and business operations
IT service management (ITSM) services	ITSM services provide operational services to IT products and the product teams, whether in the form of access requests or operational application support. The Service Catalog is broken up into a few main components: Service Catalog item – High-level capabilities, delivered through an IT service desk Service Offering – A package of one or more service/products with a defined level of service in terms of availability and scope Service – Actual service details which need to meet the stakeholder’s requirements.	Service Catalog item: account access, software requests Service Offering: service access request

Products vs. services: what’s the difference?

In addition to the taxonomy above, here’s a visualization of how IT products and services interact.

Atlassian’s IT products

Products have been created with the goal of creating durable, accountable, and autonomous teams in mind, we took the time to flesh out what each product team does and how each team would work both within the team and cross-functionally. We defined a set of 26 products and 11 shared services that align with the various business offerings and outcomes we deliver.

All of them are product-, service- or platform-oriented, but they all operate with the same fundamental principles of delivering against enterprise-wide strategic objectives through continuous improvement, innovation, and clear success metrics.

Keep in mind that the below operating model map is meant to visualize the relationship between the products and services across the value chain. It is not an org chart and does not represent reporting relationships.