POM for IT – product map and taxonomy

Taxonomy

Name

Definition

Example

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.

Image courtesy of Metis Strategy

 

 

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.

Atlassian IT product map

Current as of July 2022 (but very much subject to change over time!)

Product Groups

Sales

Marketing

Customer Support

HR

Finance

Legal

Workplace Tech

Customer One

Enterprise sales execution

Segmentation and targeting

Case mgmt

Talent acquisition

Core financials

Legal

End-point engineering

Inside Atlassian

SMB sales execution

Demand mgmt

Cust. support experience

Talent experience

Procurement

Consent

 

Dev environment

Channel

Omni-channel

Knowledge mgmt

Pay to rewards

Tax

Privacy and risk mgmt

 

 

Customer success

Events mgmt

Support workforce mgmt

 

Treasury

 

 

 

 

 

Cust. support platform

 

 

 

 

 

Enterprise-wide platforms

Collaboration

IAM

Networking

Test automation

Experience

Automation

 

 

Shared services

Architecture

Automation services

Core data and analytics

End-user services

Innovation

Service desk

M&A

Platform engineering

Platform operations

Regulatory compliance

Strategy and business operations