Why High-Performing Organizations Need Toss-Style TPMs in the AI Era (opens in new tab)
TPM roles are often associated with coordinating schedules, dependencies, risks, and stakeholders. Toss argues that this is no longer enough: as organizations grow and AI increases cross-team complexity, the most important problems often fall into gray areas with no clear owner. Its TPM is therefore redefined as a strategic execution problem-solver who structures ambiguous problems and drives them to measurable resolution. ## Why TPM Needs to Be Redefined - Traditional TPMs typically deliver already-defined technical programs by managing: - Schedules - Risks - Dependencies - Cross-functional communication - At Toss, many difficult problems do not begin as clearly named programs. - Common examples include: - Problems spanning multiple teams with no accountable owner - Strategies without an execution model - Issues recognized as important but lacking priority or authority - Frequent status updates without meaningful change - These problems may involve product, technology strategy, organization design, and operations simultaneously. - AI adoption is accelerating this trend by increasing dependencies across data, security, quality, productivity, and organizational practices. ## How Toss’s TPM Differs from Related Roles - **Product Owner:** Defines what to build, product priorities, and customer or business value. - **Engineering Manager or SDM:** Builds the conditions for a team to execute consistently, including people, quality, and team health. - **Traditional TPM or Technical Project Manager:** Manages delivery of an already-defined initiative. - **Toss TPM:** Addresses the structural problems left between or outside these roles. - Finds important but undefined problems - Establishes ownership and decision rights - Creates an executable structure - Drives the work through to completion - The role is not primarily a project scheduler or people manager; it is a problem solver for organizational gray areas. ## Why Cross-Team Problems Matter in Strong Organizations - In less mature organizations, bottlenecks such as unclear responsibility or poor prioritization are usually visible within teams. - In high-performing organizations, individual teams may operate effectively while problems remain between teams. - Organizational structures clarify accountability and speed decisions, but they can also leave boundary-spanning issues without an owner. - These issues include: - Company-wide problems that local optimization cannot solve - Important long-term work that is not urgent - Responsibilities shared by several teams but owned by none - AI makes these boundary problems more frequent because technical, operational, and organizational concerns increasingly overlap. ## What a Toss TPM Does - **Finds problems proactively** - Identifies recurring gaps, structural bottlenecks, and unnamed problems rather than waiting for assigned work. - **Turns strategy into execution** - Determines which teams must act, in what order, who should be the DRI, and what must be deprioritized. - **Creates value between teams** - Designs solutions where different goals, constraints, and working speeds collide. - **Removes blockers** - Goes beyond reporting risks by changing decision structures, assembling the right people, resetting priorities, or redesigning collaboration. - **Considers people and systems together** - Examines leadership, team composition, authority, and operating mechanisms—not just timelines. - **Measures success through real change** - Success means execution resumes, direction improves, recurring bottlenecks decrease, and future solutions become easier. - Coordination is a useful skill, but problem-solving is the role’s core identity. ## Capabilities Needed to Become This Kind of TPM - **Problem structuring:** Separating symptoms from root problems, identifying stakeholders, and locating decision bottlenecks. - **Execution design:** Translating strategic direction into concrete workflows, sequencing, and ownership. - **Influence and mobilization:** Moving teams without relying solely on formal authority, including handling difficult conversations. - **Systems thinking:** Addressing repeated problems by changing mechanisms rather than relying on individual heroics. - **Follow-through:** Carrying work from discovery and alignment through execution, measurable results, and prevention of recurrence. Toss’s recommendation is to look for important problems that everyone recognizes but no one owns. People who cannot ignore those gaps can begin acting as informal TPMs in their current organizations—turning ambiguous, cross-functional problems into executable solutions and driving them to completion.
