A previous iteration of my company had a CEO with a simple management idea that I believe worked really well: treat each product team as a mini startup.

That means EVERY role needed to develop the product was in that team. No separate corporate wide QA function, infrastructure and operations function, sales function, project management function, or domain expertise function. All the people performing those functions for that project were part of the project team.

Now this is somewhat hyperbole as if there is no sharing of resources whatsoever you don’t really have a single corporation.

But the idea is clarifying and helps to eliminate silos and tighten communication and feedback loops.

I miss that style of working. Although I try to break those barriers where I can as an individual contributor by just figuring out who needs to talk to who to make things happen and opening those channels of communication.