How do you think about team structure and organization when you have 5PMMs vs 20+PMMs?

When scaling from 5 PMMs to 20+ PMMs, it becomes increasingly important to have a well-defined team structure and organization. One approach is to ladder individuals into verticals based on their area of ownership and area of expertise. As the team grows, it may be necessary to have discipline leads and managers to help with collaboration and alignment.

Here is a simple little progression:

How PMM teams grow and mature over time…

• Generalists (with some diversity but broad and deep ownership and expertise). Can be SMEs or just great PMMs depending on product.

• Generalists with product ownership and disciplines

• Product (vertical) and GTM (horizontals) PMMs, each owning some discipline.

• Product and GTM and Discipline (horizontal and vertical; ex Competitive, release, AR, P&P). Discipline become a hub for specific work types (shared service).

• Product broken into Core and new Products with managers…and rest gets custom from there.

The decision to have a manager versus a collection of individual contributors (ICs) depends on the needs of the team. Generally, once a team reaches a certain size, it becomes necessary to have managers in order to provide leadership, direction, and support for the team. However, it's important to consider the specific needs of the team and the individuals involved when making this decision.

The number of PMMs literally means absolutely nothing without additional data: size of company, size of Revenue team, amount and size of products/features/offerings, and also the other functions available to you in and beyond your core team (competitive analysis, analyst management, content writing, etc.). Only in that context would you then evaluate how many PMMs you have and how to divide responsibilities. 5 could be enough for each to focus and own a single (or multiple) product. But that depends.

I would focus more on the scope of Product Marketing - what are the expectations and what other teams you "play" with and their expectations and capabilities - PMs, Enablement, Marketing, Content, Ops,...

Product Marketing with 5 can do the same within 20 depends on the rest of the org.

For the scope, also think about how your Business organizes - Product lines, Industries, Segments,...
You will need to fit into the company's "worldview" of the business. If the company has sales, marketing and product organized by Segments, you will also be organized by segment. If is a mix model, then you have a challenge and you might need a mix depending on complexity or support need.