Translating between who? I don't think we share the same experiences with companies, roles etc, so we might be talking past each other. Product is a pretty ill-defined role.
between business needs and how it gets implemented.
Companies that do this took 3 roles and smashed them into 1.
- marketing fit
- business analyst (aka domain experts)
- technical implementation
The reason you see people talking about how hard it is for product is because product gets to interface with the business and has an understanding of the problems and the proposed solutions. They try to tell technical to implement with no real understanding of both, due the reality of the phone game it's never implemented as they want, and they get frustrated.
The solution is to stop trying to make technical the tech equivalent of ditch diggers.
Yes, if you want a ditch dug it's relatively easy to communicate that to someone. Software aint ditches.
So while product couldn't begin to start implementing themselves, technical can absolutely be having those conversations with business.
I can see what you are saying if one is the environment you describe.
I've never worked somewhere where eng was treated like ditch diggers. But I've also never worked anywhere where this "business analyst" actually existed. If you build products for many customers there is no such person, because different customers need slightly different things and you have to pick a position v competitors.
Maybe try changing environments? Not everywhere works as you describe.
Companies that do this took 3 roles and smashed them into 1.
- marketing fit - business analyst (aka domain experts) - technical implementation
The reason you see people talking about how hard it is for product is because product gets to interface with the business and has an understanding of the problems and the proposed solutions. They try to tell technical to implement with no real understanding of both, due the reality of the phone game it's never implemented as they want, and they get frustrated.
The solution is to stop trying to make technical the tech equivalent of ditch diggers.
Yes, if you want a ditch dug it's relatively easy to communicate that to someone. Software aint ditches.
So while product couldn't begin to start implementing themselves, technical can absolutely be having those conversations with business.