Webinar Recap: How to improve communication between product and engineering.
The meetup for product people, by product people.
We had our very first webinar which covered communication within the product team, especially between product managers and engineers. This talk was packed with gems on best practices product managers can implement in their teams for maximum productivity and happy engineer/PM relations.
Date - 12th August,2018
Location - Laptop,Phone,The InternetsIf you weren’t able to make it, here is the full video recording and the audio to the webinar. Hope you enjoy the wisdom shared.
About the speaker
Mateusz Bartkowiak is a product guy with experience in product management and software engineering. Fun fact Mat has a background in English Studies, and he quoted how he draws leanings from literary theory to relate to the multitude of perspectives that are found in product teams.
He has quickly risen through ranks to become responsible for areas of product architecture in billion-dollar deployments.
In this webinar, Mat walked us through several areas that relate to communication between product managers and engineers.
- Problems in communication and their causes.
- Some solutions and best practices to apply to solve these problems.
Mat has had an amazing career leading engineering teams and product as a whole. Having been on both sides, he had a lot to share. These are our top takeaways from this talk:
1. What causes communication issues in product teams?
Siloing — Putting people who do the same work in different departments, dividing them by competence rather than the business value they can add. This causes issues such as:
- No single point of contact
- Product goals get diluted and lost in translation
- Complex decision making and decision paralysis
- Weak team cohesion and misalignment
Lack of empowerment — When engineers are treated as workers in the production line rather than working with them as one team. This causes issues such as:
- Owner worker relation
- Hampered innovation
- Lack of engineering trust
- Missed deadlines
Lack of transparency — When team members are not in the same page and understanding of core things is not the same in the team. This causes issues such as:
- PMs done/ready is not same as engineers done/ready
- Everyone thinks they are doing their best, but they don’t have the same perspective on what is the best/acceptable final outcome
2. How can we fix communication issues within product teams?
Reorganization — Arrange people to represent the product goals not just by their competences.
This ensures that you are working in teams joined by a common goal. Advocate for product thinking within these teams where everyone is empowered and accountable to doing the best work and giving the best outcome.
Alignment — Have clear goals, care about ownership, delegate work to the team and watch them surprise you with how they solve problems.
As a product manager, the focus should be on outcomes not the output. To have a clear alignment, Mat mentioned PMs should focus on problem based metrics not feature based metrics. Measure what matters, set clear objectives and key results for the team.
3. Best practices PMs can apply for great communication between PMs and Engineers
- Establish transparency — Have a clear definition of done/ready across the team, focus on the why not how.
- Write great user stories — They should be clear and understandable to all parties, give a crucial and unique context for each story.
As a (user), I want to (........), so that (......)- Define specific acceptance criteria to accompany the user story
Given < condition > , when < condition > , then < condition >- Apply behaviour driven development
Behaviour driven development is a team effort, single source of truth with all requirements in one place and ensures you are building the right thing. BDD advocates for a live documentation that is updated when focus changes.
4. Q&A
Thanks to all the product people who joined us for this webinar and Mat our speaker of the day for leading the engaging discussion. This is just the first webinar of many to come, stay tuned!
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Are you launching a new product, looking to share your product team stories, want to partner with us? Reach out to us at producttanknrb@gmail.com.
