16 teams, 8 PMs: architecture over headcount
Most agencies search against your job description. We start one step earlier: together with you, we design the team's structure and skills around the business result, and often find a leaner way to build it than planned.
The same 16 teams, two ways to staff them
One PM leads a pair of integration teams. Developers and QA stay dedicated to their own team.
Client
A large technology company that integrates its product into its customers' systems. Each integration team needed several developers, a QA engineer and a project manager.
The challenge
The company's standard was one PM per integration team. As demand grew, that meant a new senior PM hire with every new team, and a growing management layer for teams doing similar, repeatable integration work.
What we did
- Looked at how integrations actually run.Most projects followed the same flow, so much of the PM's work repeated from team to team.
- Proposed one PM per two teams.Each PM leads a pair of integration teams; developers and QA stay dedicated to their own team.
- Started with 4 teams, then scaled in waves.We built up to 4 teams in parallel at a time, growing with the client's demand from 4 to 16 teams.
Scaled in waves, with the same model each time
Up to 4 teams in parallel at a time, growing with the client's demand from 4 to 16.
Each wave adds up to 4 teams (2 pairs). Every pair is led by one PM, so 16 teams need 8 PMs.
The result
- 16 integration teams with 8 PMs instead of 16: 8 fewer senior hires.
- An estimated $56-64K saved every month at full scale, or roughly $700K a year, on PM salaries alone.
- The model has run for 2+ years, and the client kept it as it grew fourfold.
Have a similar task?
Book a 30-minute team design session