We’ve been thinking about building and optimizing cross functional product teams (Engineering, Product, and UX) for decades. Our guiding philosophical principles have their roots in factory and process optimization, and those roots influence everything we do when trying to build and organize high performing teams. In this talk we’ll break down those roots, and show how rather than framing product teams as a factory, we can more easily build high performing organizations if we treat them like professional sports teams. You’ll leave with practical tips on how to think differently about your people, and how to optimize them as a team.