Effective Collaboration in Software Teams: Product Designers & Product Managers
A simple guide to collaborating efficiently in high-performing software teams.
2024 marks my 3rd year in my role as Senior Product Designer and Consultant in Tanzu Labs (Tanzu by Broadcom), and 6th year in UX. Having transitioned from working in an agency as a UX Designer to a consultant, it opened my eyes to what it’s like to work in fully autonomous software teams. Working in the construct of a balanced team, we’ve successfully built products that delivered value to businesses and users, scaled our MVP user base at an astonishing speed (+134% in 2 Quarters), and enabled many client software teams to build software the way we do.
I’ve had many conversations with my teams, clients, friends, and practitioners in the industry — coffee chats, 1-on-1, feedback exchange, public speaking, mentoring… Out of the many discussions, the powerful yet challenging dynamics between Product Designers and Product Managers stood out. The top challenges that both roles faced while working with each other are:
- Misunderstanding of each other’s roles and responsibilities
- Lack of empathy towards each other
- Misalignment of priorities and scope of work
- Uncertainty on when and how to make decisions together
As people, it’s natural for friction to occur. We have diverse backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives and vary in how we interpret information or goals. If you faced similar challenges within your team, here’s how I overcame them.
Make a conscious effort to collaborate and communicate regularly
With remote and hybrid work models introduced to our lives now, many teams find it challenging to stay aligned. It is easy to fall into siloed work streams and choose to send a Slack message over another Zoom call. When I worked with a team of 13 from Sydney, Brisbane, and Singapore, the time difference, the difference in working hours, and the hybrid work model made it challenging for us to collaborate and stay aligned. Different conversations could happen in several Zoom breakout rooms, and not informing one another about decisions and conversations led to a lot of confusion and misalignment.
To overcome this challenge, we recognized the need for us to make a conscious effort to involve each other. We arranged more short sync-ups. Design and PM will sync on Mondays to discuss the roadmap. A daily 10-minute ‘stand-down’ at the end of the day allowed us to hand over work when we had 3 time zones (retired eventually). We send a summary to our Slack team channel after siloed discussions and pull each other into Zoom breakout rooms whenever we realize another discipline should be involved. By consistently sharing insights and progress, we maintained a cohesive workflow, ensuring that everyone was on the same page and working towards common objectives and goals.
Negotiate and align the scope of work together
You may have heard the common rant of “The designers designed over the scope and focused too much on details” or “The Product Manager kept cutting my designs and reducing the scope”. This often led to a lot of misguided efforts, tension, and time spent debating who was right. However, working together doesn’t have to be that hard.
As a Product Designer, what I found that has worked is to negotiate the scope and reach a consensus with the Product Manager before diving into the work. A collaborative and open discussion is necessary.
User Story Mapping is one of my favorite tools to negotiate with my Product Managers and Engineers on what could be the first cut of the designs. Our User Story Mapping session usually spans from 30 to 60 minutes. A Product Manager would first outline the initial steps of a user’s journey in Miro, either from scratch or based on a wireframe that I’ve done, and the team would proceed to list out tasks or features under each step. During this part of the activity, I get to make suggestions that I believe would be an ideal user experience while hearing the Engineers analyze and express their initial views on the feasibility and complexity.
The negotiation happens throughout each step and each task, and it is important to ask questions and voice out your opinion. At the end of the activity, both the Product Manager and I will have a list of prioritized backlogs, and we are crystal clear on the boundaries of the initial release.
Ideate together
Product Designers are not the sole contributors to the design of a product. By design, I don’t mean the user interfaces, the look and feel, or the corner radius that I sometimes get obsessive about. We often assume that design ideas should be left to the experts with design skills, but that shouldn’t be the case in something as dynamic as product development. Design should be a welcoming space for everyone to channel their collective expertise. I have been constantly surprised and inspired by fresh, interesting ideas my fellow Product Managers and Engineers proposed in our ideating sessions (such as Design Studio), and I always knock on their doors for impromptu 10-minute discussions to get a sense check on what I’m working on.
Reflect — as a team
Before my time in Tanzu Labs, I had only ever been to one retrospective session, and that was only after a year-long project and we were about to close it. The team harmony was way, way different. There were maybe 16 of us, and the comments were anonymous. In a 2-hour session, we voiced out problems, unpleasant experiences, and differences in POVs, but there was no opportunity to improve them since the project wasn’t continuing. I left the session feeling extremely disconnected and confused, and maybe a little bitter. I felt that I was disagreeing with what people said in my mind and trying to defend my work, rather than listening and solving the problem together.
My team and I run weekly Retrospective with different client teams on different projects. Our client teams are always new to this process, and most of them are a little shy or uncertain about what to do in the first 2 weeks. As we repeat it every week, we start to see everyone getting gradually more relaxed and open with their thoughts, and sometimes wearing funky Zoom filters for remote sessions. It provided a dedicated space for the team to collectively review their successes and challenges and also drew us closer as a team.
Openness, humility, and kindness are integral elements that contribute to a positive and transparent working relationship
This article is also published on my LinkedIn.
