Peter Merholz

How do you shape and operate cross-functional teams to best serve customers? Peter Merholz has many thoughts on the topic in his book, “Org Design for Design Orgs: Building and Managing In-House Design Teams.”

In this book, Peter discusses the three types of organizational structures for design teams: centralized internal services, decentralized and embedded, and centralized partnership (the best of both worlds). In centralized partnerships, senior designers maintain connections to specialized org teams, while not necessarily embedded (i.e. decentralized and embedded model).This makes sense since designers will possess deeper vertical skill sets later in their careers. Less experienced designers become more modular gears, slotting into project functions as needed (i.e. centralized model). There are numerous advantages to the nature hybrid of this organizational scheme: (1) designers feel supported in their careers, skill development, and daily workplace needs; (2) design teams maintain commitment to products and features; (3) centralization helps maintain a holistic view across the entire customer journey and different segments of the organization; (4) junior designers have mobility after shorter commitments; (5) teams are organized by steps in the customer journey which prevents frequent team reorganization.

The arc of Peter’s career has been one of expanding scale and scope – from interfaces, to flows and structures, to strategies and systems, and now to the organizations in which they reside.

Peter co-founded Adaptive Path, a user experience consultancy, and helped lead it for over ten years. After Adaptive Path, Peter has held a number of in-house roles, running design teams at Inflection, Groupon, Jawbone, and Snagajob. He contracts to this day for a number of other organizations, such as OpenTable, Capital One, and Kaiser Permanente.

Also, did you know Peter was the person who coined the term “blog?”

Peter is well known for his writings:

Org Design for Design Orgs: Building and Managing In-House Design (2016).

Subject To Change: Creating Great Products & Services for an Uncertain World (2008).