At Nashville Software School, we provide our students and graduates who are still on the search for their first job in tech with opportunities to dive deeper and continue their education while on the job hunt. These graduates are referred to as Seekers.
Seekers at Nashville Software School (NSS) had the pleasure of learning from Gavin Coyle in a recent meeting this spring. During his session, Gavin brought his experience and knowledge as a product leader and Agile coach at Enok Collective to share practical ways to work with product managers as a software engineer. His insights are especially valuable for career changers, like our Seekers at NSS, to understand the role of engineers in product development.
Understanding Roles in a Typical Product Team
Understanding the role of engineers on a product team and learning how to effectively work with product managers will make you a desirable candidate on your job search. “These are things I would want my software engineers to know,” shares Gavin. Balanced innovation, a term that Gavin describes as how cross-functional members of a team coordinate their efforts to build software in an iterative and incremental way, includes how many teams coordinate work and the dependencies between them.
A typical product team and their responsibilities for a digital product looks like this:
- Product Manager
Owns the Viability of the product (Typically 1 per product) - Product Designer
Owns the Desirability of the product (Typically 1 per product) - Product Engineers
Owns the Feasibility of the product (Typically 2 - 4 per product)
Additional Product Roles and their Responsibilities
Depending on the size of the company, there can be a product owner and a project manager in addition to the product manager. These roles function like assembly line managers, making sure everything runs smoothly, on time, and delivers the expected results. These roles are often confused, so let’s take a deeper look at what they do.
Project Manager
Project managers have the least amount of authority in this group. They act as the owners of a project’s scope, schedule, and budget. They often don’t set the plan, but are given the plan to execute. “[They] set when the cogs in the wheel or the levers turn and the sequence of these tasks,” Gavin explains. “[They answer questions like:] Who owns them? Which have dependencies? And then they think like a delivery manager on how multiple people and multiple teams can coordinate together to keep on track.”
Product Owner
Typically affiliated with Scrum environments, this role owns the conversion of a "business problem to solve" into tasks a product team can execute. But the term owner can be misleading. In a large organization, the product owner owns just a piece, like a feature, but they don’t own the entire product.
For example, Gavin explains,“There may be 100 product teams that work on Microsoft Word. So there would be 100 product owners. A team, or [even] multiple teams, may own just one feature of that product.”
Product Manager
A product manager acts like a "mini-CEO" of a product and has the most authority. They create and own the product’s vision and strategy, and act at the crossroads of all business functions in delivering a product to market. “A product manager is someone that has more authority. The CEO of a digital product company is probably the original product manager. They're thinking about the vision for building the market. And they're also making decisions with the product team,” shares Gavin. In smaller organizations, product managers can also act as project managers.
If the product manager is like a “mini-CEO”, how can a software engineer work with them to influence the product?
What Software Engineers Should Expect from a good Product Manager
Product managers play a critical role in the product development cycle. Software engineers should expect their Product manager to set the product’s vision and strategy by answering questions like, “what future are we creating for our customers with this product?” and “what milestones do we need to achieve to accomplish the vision?” Product managers will set the release plan by identifying what strategic goals need to be accomplished in the next scheduled product release. They may also set incremental goals to help achieve the larger strategic goals.
What Product Managers Expect from Good Software Engineers
Without engineers there is no product. Engineers should be critical thinkers and active participants in the innovation process. They should challenge assumptions, ask clarifying questions, and collaborate closely with product managers to ensure the feasibility and viability of product decisions.
“Product people know markets. They know where people are going to be paying money for it, but they don't know what's possible. That's why you are around,” shares Gavin. “Ask clarifying questions like, ‘Tell me more about why that's important. Tell me more about the user and the pain that we have here. If there's a ten step sequence, is focusing on step three really going to make us more money?’ This allows the product leader to think out loud and hear their own assumptions. Follow up with questions like, ‘Is that an assumption or have we validated that yet? What user testing has shown us that that's actually true? What product analytics can we pull in?’ A lot of times product managers can get excited. They chase an idea. They may be chasing a dream that's not a reality. Leaning in on questions for clarity actually leads to insights. You wading in and asking questions helps the whole group learn together instead of you just being a butt in the seat and saying, ‘what are you telling me to do?’ Product managers need you to push in and be a part of the collaboration and the innovation.”
On the flip side, here are some questions that Gavin recommends engineers be able to answer for product managers:
- Product Strategy Feasibility - Is our team capable of accomplishing these milestones? Do we have the right skills? Technology? Is the sequence right?
- Product Release Plan Feasibility - Is our team capable of accomplishing these features? How large is the relative effort for each? Is there enough margin in place for unknowns and maintenance?
- Product Increment Feasibility - Is our team capable of accomplishing these features? Which of these tasks can you commit to completing in the next iteration?
- Keeping Promises - Did you accomplish what you committed to completing? Does it meet the "definition of done" we agreed to?
You’ve got to be a critical thinker. I can't do my job as a product person if you don't help me think.
Takeaways
By fostering a collaborative environment and encouraging engineers to think critically and engage deeply with the business aspects of their projects, teams can build more successful and sustainable products. Engineers should engage with their product teams in the following ways:
- Active Participation: Engineers should actively participate in all stages of planning, from daily stand-ups to long-term strategy meetings.
- Collaboration and Communication: Effective communication with product managers and other team members is essential. Engineers should feel empowered to voice their opinions and contribute to the decision-making process.
- Understanding Business Context: Having a grasp of the business goals and market needs helps engineers align their work with the company's strategic objectives.
For those interested in furthering their knowledge, Gavin recommends exploring the resources about product teams available through Enok Learn, the source for his presentation, and staying engaged with the community for continuous learning and growth. Enok Learn was created by Enok to address some of the internal issues they were experiencing with growing and developing their software engineering talent. “Enok Learn was birthed by Enok as a product or a brand to solve our own problem. Software engineers are hard to find. They're hard to afford. They're hard to grow. They're hard to keep,” he shares. “[But] it is a sweet field. [And] it's going to keep growing.” .
