Coordination costs: How I’d reduce the tax of growing product teams
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Notice the cost of more connections
I think coordination cost is the time and attention a product organization spends aligning people, resolving dependencies, transferring context, and making decisions. As a team or portfolio grows, adding people can increase capability while also increasing the number of relationships that need care.
I would look for symptoms: recurring alignment meetings, duplicated discovery, decisions waiting for too many approvals, work blocked by unclear interfaces, and stakeholders receiving different versions of the plan.
Reduce unnecessary coordination
I would clarify product boundaries and decision rights so every question does not travel through the same central group. Written decision records, stable interfaces, shared vocabulary, and a small number of meaningful planning artifacts can reduce repeated explanation.
I would also distinguish coordination that creates value from coordination that merely reports activity. A cross-team conversation that resolves a dependency is useful. A meeting where everyone repeats a status already visible elsewhere is a candidate for removal.
Scale through learning, not bureaucracy
I would periodically ask whether a new process is reducing a real cost and what it costs the organization to maintain. Sometimes the right answer is a new team boundary; sometimes it is a clearer owner or a smaller commitment.
My bottom line
I manage coordination cost as part of product design: make boundaries and decisions clear, then remove ceremony that no longer helps. The Product HQ product manager certification supports this systems thinking, and the Product HQ newsletter shares more guidance.
