The roles in a Growth Team
The Growth process is an agile business development methodology that is related to agile coaching (project management). Here we will go through the roles we think are central in a growth team.
The idea with growth teams is to continuously put representatives from different departments in the same room. At startups and small businesses, a growth team can include one person from each department, while at established companies it can include a number of engineers, marketers, analysts and designers. Regardless of size, the team needs to include some, if not all, of the following roles:
Core roles
Growth Lead (Scrum Master)
All teams need a leader, although the role of Growth Lead should not be confused with the traditional leader. This role is likened to a project manager who drives the iterative work and steers the team towards achieving set goals. Growth Lead can either be the sponsor of the project, a hired specialist or an internal person with the right experience.
This person should ensure that the team does not slip into side tracks that do not help maximize the company’s north star metric. Another important aspect is to track the “right” metrics. In marketing or product development, too much focus can sometimes be placed on so-called “vanity metrics”, which can look good on paper but do not contribute to further understanding or growth.
The growth lead is active in idea generation and experimentation. It is also he who sets the main focus for sprints and decides within what time frame it should be completed. Example of main focus: get more users to upgrade from the free version to the paid version of a product.
In addition, it is the growth lead that leads weekly meetings with the team.
Product owner
The role of product owner exists in many organizations and the title has many meanings. Generally speaking, a good product owner is the CEO of the product. In other words, the person in the team is responsible for maximizing the value of the product. In a growth team, however, it is a matter of practically prioritizing the team’s activities and owning the activity list. & Nbsp; It therefore requires a broad understanding of what the tasks of the various team members can have. Therefore, the product owner must put them in relation to each other and prioritize the resources. It does not require a complicated system such as JIRA (although it is sometimes needed), but an activity list in a spreadsheet works well in the beginning. Then there are many great tools to evaluate for this ( Asana , Pivotal tracker , Trello etc)
Another important task for the product owner is to determine if an idea or task is too vague and needs to be specified more clearly.
In many companies or organizations, it is the product owner’s mission to break silos between departments and find employees from each department and then put together and kickstart the growth team. When we start a new growth team, we often take on this role as well.
Analyst
Generating insights based on data is not only a prerequisite, but a must for a growth team. It is these analyzes that show whether our experiments are successful or not. The analyst should be able to twist and turn data, create models, export from systems and make the results understandable to other team members. Another good knowledge here is also to be able to know what can be tracked and how it should be measured in marketing, sales and product design. This is also a role we at Growth Hackers usually take on in the growth team.
Specialists
Marketer
We at Growth Hackers advocate having a marketer on board the growth team to achieve optimal results. It is extra valuable if this person is a hybrid between marketer and engineer. The specific type of marketing skills that the team needs varies depending on the product or company. Some need someone who can create advertising accounts while others rely heavily on SEO and need a specialist in it.
Product designer
Having a person who can produce the design that the team needs can be beneficial. It makes it possible to accelerate the speed of performing experiments. UX designers can also be valuable in providing important insights into user psychology and interface design.
Developer
The person who writes code for the product’s functions and pages has, to say the least, a crucial role in the team. It happens that developers are excluded from the idea process and only given a ticket for what is to be done. There is a risk that it undermines the developers’ commitment but also that ideas from the most technical members are lost.
Support (customer success)
This person knows how customers use and engage in the product / service. This can contribute valuable insights for the growth team. For example, to adapt the product / service to customers’ needs and thereby maximize value.
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