Conventional parameter designs of two-stage grid-connected photovoltaic (PV) system relied on its mathematical model of the cascade structure (CS), but the procedure is excessively cumbersome to implement. Besides, for a two-stage converter system, the coupling interaction between the power converters can directly lead to a poor parameter design. To overcome this drawback, this paper uses a simplified structure (SS) of single-phase two-stage grid-connected PV system to better design the parameters of the front-stage dc-dc converter. After establishing the small-signal model for SS and CS in the PV system, the relative eigenvalue sensitivity is used as the criterion for judging the influence of some parameters on the stability of the two structures. The stable boundary of MPPT control parameters is compared and discussed in SS and CS, respectively. In addition, the relationship between the front-stage dc-dc converter and the rear-stage dc-ac inverter is analyzed by the modal participation factor calculated in CS. An experiment is also performed at the end of this paper to further verify the feasibility of using SS to design the parameters of the dc-dc converter in the PV system.