Lightspeedcast Ep 2: The three corners of product development
For our second podcast at Lightspeed, we wanted to talk about something core in the way we develop our product: the triangle. But wait… what is a triangle? It’s a trio made of a product manager, an engineering manager, and a product designer. Listen up to understand how they work together and form “one brain but with three different perspectives”.
Thank you to our three amazing guests Sabrina, Diana and Sam for sharing their experience and to our wonderful host Ivana for her energy and contribution. Massive thank you to Mick, who transformed a simple Zoom meeting into this amazing podcast. 🌟
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Please scroll down for the transcript!
Ivana: Kia ora, everyone. My name is Ivana and I’m a product designer here at Lightspeed. I’ve been working here for 2 and a half years. I’m very honoured to host this second episode of Lightspeedcast where we talk about how product, design and engineering work. I am here in the Auckland office by myself — there are not a lot of people around because it is the Pandemic. Today, we will be discussing the triangle and on the line, with me, I have 3 smart and amazing people; Diana, who is a product designer, Sabrina, a group product manager, and Sam, a software development manager. We’re here to talk about the triangle, how it works and what a typical week looks like for these people. And we’ll get to learn more about their day to day. So let’s get started — Diana, could you please give us a brief intro of yourself.
Diana: Hi my name is Diana and I’m a product designer at Lightspeed. I’ve been at Lightspeed for about 4 years now and in that time I’ve touched almost every part of the product but most recently I’ve worked on the e-commerce part of Lightspeed and now the inventory area of Lightspeed. A little bit about my background, I studied Graphic Design then I worked as a Graphic Designer, I worked in the Web and then I worked in Industrial Design, until I found Product Design and the tech industry. I’ve been in the tech (industry) for the last 5 plus years.
Ivana: Amazing, thank you. Sam, your turn.
Sam: Hi, I’m Sam. I am a Senior Software Developer Manager here at Lightspeed. My years of experience is interesting. I started at Lightspeed in my first role back in 2013. I left in 2015 and I came back in 2019 in a Lead Role. I guess during that time I was responsible for putting together the iPad register app. I think I did the first commit back in 2013 and it’s still going strong today, so it’s been wonderful watching that journey and I’ve had the privilege to work with many people and work with many different parts of this really complex product.
Ivana: Great, awesome. I think the fun fact is that Diana and I have both worked with you, Sam, in our years working at Lightspeed. Next, Sabrina, over to you.
Sabrina: Thank you. I’m Sabrina Mah, I’m a group product manager also at Lightspeed. My team looks after what we call the retail network. We just make sure that our product is the right product market fit for merchants that are in our core verticals or core industries that we target. I’ve been with the company for 2 and a half years. I started off as a product manager in e-commerce and then got promoted to senior, eventually moved over to the inventory space as well. And now instead of managing products, I manage people which is really exciting. I’ve also had more than 5 years of experience in software and my background was in marketing, product marketing but I think product is where my passion is.
Ivana: Awesome, thank you. So, what is a triangle and why does Lightspeed have them? Diana, would you like to start us off?
Diana: Yeah, okay, so I guess I’ll start by explaining what the triangle is. The triangle is a trio made up of a product manager, an engineering manager, and a product designer. Together we take a piece of work from the problem discovery stage — figuring out what the problem is through to designing what the solution is and then out to delivery. So building that and then shipping that out to the user and all three of us are there at every step of the way. So the PM (product manager) advocates mostly for the user goals and the business goals. The designer advocates for the user goals as well and the user experience including the interface. The engineer advocates for the quality and strategy of the build and the delivery. So we’re all advocating from all corners of the triangle, in our areas of expertise and there’s like a tension that we create which is so important for collaboration. We do this all the way through the problem’s solution delivery stage. That means that the business, the user, the design, the code, the engineers, all of that are considered, all the way through that process. And that allows us to design and deliver the value for both our users as well as our business.
Ivana: Great! It seems like there are quite a lot of things involved in the triangle and around the triangle. Sabrina, could you please tell us more about what each corner focuses on?
Sabrina: Each corner of the triangle has a different focus. Because design really drives visibility and engineering brings visibility to the table and product really cares about the value to the merchant. The beauty of working with my triangle is that we each bring us focus — this perspective throughout the journey, from problem discovery to development. So throughout problem discovery to solution discovery to development and it’s like we’re like one brain but with three different perspectives which is kind of cool.
Ivana: I love the one brain with 3 different perspectives. I definitely feel like sometimes we are just a body moving through time. Sam, could you tell us more about the dynamic of the triangle.
Sam: Okay. The fact we’re in constant collaboration with each other means we solve problems together and as we’re going throughout that cycle, we’ll touch on that a little bit later, is we’re working through that cycle, we’re able to address issues as they come up rather than predicting all of the things which is of course we know is impossible at the step. This means we can sort of be tactical about how we apply time, we can increase scope occasionally, where it really makes sense so we can provide extra value but ultimately really speeds up and makes the engineering process really quite delightful. Working at a product trio or triangle is something that isn’t new. This is really a desirable way to work and it’s important to know that we’re not just making this thing up. It’s proven, it works really, really well. But what we’ve done is we’ve taken the bits that really work for us and we’ve applied it in a way that works for the products that we’re building.
Ivana: Sam, that was a really interesting point that you brought up about this being an idea out there in the world already. I think something that is quite interesting here at Lightspeed is; since we’ve integrated this in our product engineering design teams, we have learned to evolve and improve this based on what we need, not only as individuals, as teams, but also to the business and how, as it grows and scales. I’d like to next talk about how the three of you would work together. So Sabrina, as a PM, could you please tell us how the three of you work together?
Sabrina: Of course. It usually starts off with problem discovery, which is led by me, as the product manager. Because they work so closely with both internal and external stakeholders, I run about a plethora of product gaps. And since I’m dependent, I’ll make sure that I’ll work with both my designer and engineering lead into conversations with merchants or with our sales team or with whoever we’re talking to or we’re getting these learnings so that we actually hear the feedback upfront. I think it’s very different, hearing the feedback from me versus hearing from merchants themselves or hearing from sales, what’s making it difficult to sell our product. It’s the really looping in my entire triangle at the start of problem discovery, I think is quite key. And this also helps that they’re already aware of the problem rather than me again passing on the feedback along because it really is easy, a lot easier to understand something when you’re at the forefront of it. And once the problems are quite clear, it’s easy for product managers to continue to find, like on the solution as an example. But here at Lightspeed, we don’t need to do this because; one, our triangle, they already understand the product gap, from having been included in problem discovery, so they already know what we need to solve for and two, I fully trust my team to solve the problem — that’s where they excel so that’s where I can really kind of can back-off. The only time I would be part of the solution discovery or be part of development is if there are questions about the value to the merchant or… are we solving the goal? is the thing that we need to trade-off actually solving the goals of what we’re trying to achieve?
Ivana: Great, thank you. Diana, from the designer corner, what is collaboration like for you?
Diana: Yes, the answer to that is yes. In terms of like its typical week or the designer team, like how I work with the team. We’re all very much in each other’s pocket. So we’re very collaborative, communication — and that’s sharing and listening is key. Touching base early and often when we use interviewing, design and PM often leading those — we love when engineering wants to join too because all of us are able to bring different questions to the table. So when I’m understanding the way that users are currently working and understanding all of the pain that they’re feeling and their current workflows; as well as designing the solutions to that pain, how to address that pain. I’m bringing the PM and the engineer along on all of those designs. And that’s not just the design, it’s the user flow, it’s the words, it’s the questions, thoughts. I want to get their feedback whenever possible. For us, the triangle touches base daily to review designs, to review future work the PM is digging into and again to be in each other’s pockets. The goal is kind of, if someone asks me how engineering was progressing or what the PM was looking at next or why — I should be able to answer that. It’s all our own work, we all own this area together, and it’s just a very highly collaborative team.
Ivana: Thank you, Diana. It just sounds like a lot of communication in between the triangle, and it sounds like there’s a lot of trust within the triangle and with each other’s discipline and abilities. Sam, as the tech lead in the triangle, what’s it like from your perspective?
Sam: I guess the biggest advantage of an empowered team or one of the cornerstones of that concept is the idea that some of the best ideas when it comes to the product come from within the team. It’s my job to make sure that it reaches me when they are working on something. We don’t obsess about the “how” — that’s their best place to think about the “how”. We think a lot about the “why” so they understand the impact of what they’re building, and that really helps because we’ll be working with products and design to make sure that that’s crystal clear. So we’re working with intention and those engineers will come across opportunities and ideas and it will be my job to make sure they feel comfortable to sort of surface them out. I guess at this point we need to talk a little bit about cycles and how we work because this is a really interesting way for engineering to sort of take place. We’re fully empowered to define the balance of what we’re building but also the timeframe. We kept that at six weeks but we don’t wrap that in a like — look, we need to do a two week sprint and here’s a list of things that we’ve defined every element of what we’re gonna do. We work in a way that sort of embraces the facts that what you start with is never what you finished with. And from the engineering standpoint that’s really powerful because we don’t have that picture of like — “Okay, we have to go through all this ceremony every two weeks” which doesn’t really serve a lot of purpose. We’re working within teaching, we want to ship something at the end of that six week cycle and what’s really great is that as we are working through this we are constantly talking, checking in, making sure that engineers are servicing what they’re finding — any issues. We don’t try and get it perfect because six weeks is quite a long time, we’re not gonna get it perfect and we’re totally lenient to that. The triangle thus has the agility to address these problems as they come up and we don’t really stress about it. We’re all comfortable coming to a designer and saying “Hey look, this just doesn’t feel right. This is a bit weird” and that means we build a more powerful product because we’re all in on it and we’re all invested in that outcome which ultimately the product manager will be able to monitor and then report back in terms of the impact of what we do and if it’s not me seeing what we initially set out to achieve we will come back and we will rethink and then we will revisit it. It’s not something that, again, works perfectly this time around.
Diana: So I’d love to add to that and just echo a lot of the points that Sam had made. So with Basecamp Shape Up our way of working and cycles and stuff. We work to understand the principles of what they were trying to achieve and then how they were going to achieve that and then we took those principles and applied them in a way that suited us. It wasn’t a copy and paste. We understood the idea of cycles, that they were to always be delivering value to scope the slimmest slice of value that we could ship that would stand on its own and then to ship that. It was about incrementalism and iterative design. It was about avoiding year-long projects. So we applied that loosely — we didn’t follow all of the rules of Shape Up, we don’t do the place-your-bets activity or having to pull the cord on a project. We just looked at what each of these activities or prescriptions aimed to achieve and then we chose what we wanted and then we adapted bits and pieces to fit our way of working.
Ivana: It was really interesting that both of you mentioned working with the rest of the engineers in the team. I’m really interested to dig into the dynamic between the designer, the PM, and the rest of the engineers. Diana, could you please start us off? How do you and the rest of the triangle work with the rest of the engineers and the team?
Diana: Design works very closely with engineering. I definitely bring the triangle and then a few; if not all of the engineers, in on the problem we’re exploring. The wireframe, the designs, that’s developing to get their feedback as early and often as possible. Design cares about making it easy to build and structurally sound and engineering cares about making it easy and great for the user. So we’re sharing those values and things that we care about. I’m always wanting engineering input on the design so that I can design around any technical concerns or difficulties that they might see. They also want to try to make it the best they can for the users, so they’re just not just gonna trim bits out and have the easiest, fastest thing to build. We balance that together with that tension that we have from the triangle and from the things that we care about. Both early and often design reviews were able to achieve that. And along that same thing we don’t have the culture where design just throws the design over the wall and that’s the first time the engineer has seen it and they are like “what is this?” we don’t do handovers. The engineers are there the whole way, they are able to give feedback and then at a certain point when the design is mostly done, they are able to pick that up and start building that. They bring me along to do design reviews every now and then to check that everything is alright — to do a bit of quality check so I bring them along and they bring me along.
Ivana: Thanks, Diana. Loved hearing that from a design perspective. Sabrina, what’s it like for you as the PM?
Sabrina: I think it’s important for me as the product manager to really provide visibility and clarity to the development team. For example, a few engineers here have told me how fulfilling it is when they can feel merchant pains and when they know that they’ve solved the problem and the pains that the merchant has faced. And sometimes, if the engineers have time/ if they want to, I’ll include them in on some of the merchant’s interviews and some of them have said “Hey, it’s actually quite eye-opening to sit in on these because I can really empathize with the merchant”. It’s very easy to sit behind the computer and be coding but when you get to talk to the merchants and hear some of the problems that they are facing you really feel the sense of fulfilment that what you’re doing is actually impacting somebody and somebody that you have spoken to. So I think that’s really important — really providing the stability and clarity about what those problems are; that they’re solving. I think in addition to that it’s really important for me as the PM to hear from the engineers. I think a really good example was when we heard from both support and merchants that there’s this problem they were facing and they couldn’t quite pinpoint what exactly the problem was. They were facing a lot of delays, they really didn’t trust their product, there were just a lot of itches that they were facing. Again, because our support team and merchants couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it was, it was really hard for us to help them. And then at the same time, the engineers have told me “Hey, like what’s happening with the product?”, they’ve been monitoring and they’ve been seeing some performance issues and when you overweight that with what the merchants and what support was saying it was like “oh my god that’s spot on, that’s the problem that both developers are seeing and our merchants are facing” like this is so important that we are hearing from all angles. On top of that, I think sometimes people who aren’t quite technical like myself, we don’t really understand what tech that might mean. I think it’s important for us to listen to the engineers because there are some times when we need to make some platform improvements that are really critical and it’s important for us to be able to understand this so that we can pitch this to the rest of the business — that we do continue improving on the platform. I think that’s the selling point for engineers — that’s really important, that as a product manager, we’re listening to the engineers, that we also tackle that as well.
Ivana: Great, thank you. The collaboration of the triangle and the rest of the engineers is really interesting, especially learning about how design and product influence the team, how they solve problems, how they build things, and how it comes down to when you need to compromise on things. Sam, I’m wondering how do the engineers of the team influence the triangle?
Sam: That’s a great question and I guess what’s really been worth it to watch, as a manager, is how engaged the team members are in the problems they are solving. We’ve got a culture of continuous discovery and that’s part of how excellent the interviews are going on all the time and certainly providing their context to the engineer just plays complete evidence. I guess my role is, first and foremost, that I’m an unblocker. I wanna make sure that everyone’s coming along, they have their access and if they don’t have their access, I go and get their access, so let’s take that. Beyond that, I want to make sure that engineers are working with tooling and building in ways that are really interesting to them. I know what each one of the engineers that report to me is really interested in how they work. They might be less invested or less interested in going to interviews, that’s not to say they’re not interested in the outcomes. But potentially that’s not something that is important to them at that point in their career. So I make sure that it’s married up with how they want to work. I guess you also end up with engineers that are incredibly technical and there’s always a place for that. Of course, it’s all about aligning the work with things that really sort of resonate with how they want to work. And certainly at a base level, that’s working with technology, that’s working with the latest and greatest. And certainly, just back to the cycle’s point, it really enables us to experiment and try new ways of working and fully embrace the fact that we are not gonna get it right the first time. But if you’ve been all-in for six weeks to ship something, there’s a lot to talk about after that and retro’s really insightful and genuinely really valuable and interesting. From an engineering perspective, it opens up all these opportunities and I guess the development and the expertise that the engineers that report to me have built up in a very very short amount of time is really quite phenomenal. And again, it’s back to that factor of empowerment, that we’re not dictating how they want to work, we’re not saying you have to build within this constraints were giving them I guess every opportunity to use the latest and greatest as long as within reason and it makes sense.
Ivana: Great, I love hearing all of you talk about how you all work together. You can really hear the passion and it really comes across here. And I’d love to talk about what are your most favorite parts about talking in a triangle. Diana, would you like to start us off?
Diana: I like the camaraderie of it. We all work together, we move forward together, we’re all working to strengthen our work and bring those diverse perspectives, and it’s just a feeling of you’re not alone, I feel really supported. Just the other day, I was working on designing a solution and my PM was like “Let me know what you need, let me know how I can support you. Do you need music quotes, do you need data?” and then my engineer was like “If you have technical questions just let me know, if you wanna walk through ideas to figure out how technically feasible they are just hit me up, I’ll make time for you”. I love that being in a triangle means that I have a first team and I also have a team of product designers but I have this team where we’re all working on the same work together, we’re all pushing that work forward, and working towards the same goal. We all work together and I love it.
Ivana: Thank you, I definitely feel that going to my triangle and being comfortable and talking to them about what I need and what I need to be supported on and sometimes they really do a good job of doing that to me when I don’t do a good job of going to them first. Sabrina I’d like to hear what your favourite part of working in a triangle is like?
Sabrina: Oh my god, everything that Diana has said. Okay, so for a bit of context, I think in my past experience as a product manager, a lot of the strategy and a lot of decisions in terms of what you work on are decided by leaders and coming to them for the first time as a product manager, the leadership team here really trust the triangle to make decisions for the team so we decide what the road map looks like, we decide what we work on next, we decide a lot — there’s a lot of decision making that we can do. We have a lot of influence and that is very scary for a product manager to have all these decisions are on their shoulders and it’s really helpful for me to be able to lean on my triangle, like Diana and Sam, to validate what I’m working on so it’s not really just me behind the decisions but it really is a team — three people behind the decisions and because they are at the forefront of all the pains and the problems that our merchants are facing, that our internal stakeholders are facing. It’s really helpful to help validate that, yes we’re on the right track, we’re heading in the right direction, and that we’re making these decisions together like one brain.
Ivana: Thank you, Sabrina. I’d love to hear about the other corner of the brain, Sam?
Sam: Awesome. This is a tricky one because I obviously really enjoy a lot of aspects of it. But I think something that’s really really fresh in my mind is I have the privilege of showing off the development work that the team has done at a lot of different points. For me, it’s really quite profound when you feel like you’ve genuinely nailed something from all of the angles. The product manager, the discovery — we know the pain points, the problems we’re trying to solve — that’s crystal clear. We know that on the other side, the impact that this thing that we’ve built has had. The developers did an incredible job using the appropriate technology to build something that went above and beyond what we initially set out to achieve. The designers of course join those two things together and produce beautiful designs that are incredibly intuitive and easy to work with and with this, answer all the questions as they came up — as developers are working through solving their problems. And to really step back and look at the whole thing and, wow, we actually really did something quite remarkable. We know where we wanna go next with it. We know this thing has an impact and we have confidence in what we built.
Ivana: That was really beautiful. I love what you all say about support, trust, autonomy, understanding, and solving the problem thoroughly and being empowered to do these things. I started at Lightspeed as a junior product designer. It was my first full-time job out of Uni, and I can definitely echo a lot of your sentiments. While working at Lightspeed, I’ve grown confidence in myself as a designer, as I’ve learned how to collaborate and communicate with not only the product designers in my team, but within the triangle and all our stakeholders. We all really get the opportunity to grow in the areas we care about, to show off our skills and to learn from each other. We are all one brain learning and growing.
Ivana: Today we talked about the triangle, what it is, and its benefits for building a great product. We learned about the different perspectives and how each perspective is important to solving problems and being innovative. So, thank you, the three of you for giving us a glimpse into your work. If you want to be part of Lightspeed, and work with amazing people like these three, head to our careers page. Ivana, Diana, Sabrina, and Sam here, all from the comfort of our own homes. Thank you and we will catch you next time. Ciao.
