Separating roles by strategy, operations, and tactics

As organizations grow, separating roles across 3 layers helps maintain focus and effectiveness:

• The Strategy layer includes directors, principal designers, and architects, and focuses on long-term vision and direction.
• The Operations layer includes practice leads and coaches and enables effective ways of working.
• The Execution layer includes product managers, designers, and developers and delivers day-to-day customer value.

This separation allows each layer to focus on what it does best. Strategy can think long-term without getting pulled into daily work. Operations can improve practices and tools without delivery pressure. Execution can focus on customer value without constantly shifting direction.

However, this model risks creating handoffs where strategy plans, operations create processes, and execution simply implements. To prevent this, maintain continuous communication between layers, position strategy and operations as enablers rather than controllers, and preserve cross-functional collaboration at the execution level. Each discipline contributes differently across layers. For example, in product management, strategy handles portfolio planning, operations provides workflow templates and coaching, and execution manages sprint planning and stakeholder communication. This specialization helps organizations scale while maintaining both speed and alignment.