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by PaulRobinson 922 days ago
Product managers own the "Why?" and the "What?". Project managers own the "When?". Engineering managers own the "Who?". Engineers own the "How?".

When people try treading on other patches, it always ends in disaster. That works both ways: engineers are lousy at the "Why?" and the "What?" because they think too much in terms of "How?"; and yes, product managers need to step away from the "How?" unless it's to clarify the "What?" or the "Why?".
2 comments
hehhehaha 922 days ago
Hard disagree, cross role context is critical for intuition on getting stuff done. A designer with no insight on engineering will create shitty designs that take forever to build, create patterns that arent reusable, etc. Engineers with no insight on product will not be able to balance the debt/product ratio properly. You can say that all of this gets sorted out with proper communication, but knowledge and intuition will always beat leaky bucket cross role comms
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PaulRobinson 922 days ago
"Having context" isn't the same as "having ownership or accountability".

Of course there needs to be communication and context, but when engineers start to try and direct the "what" or the "why", it becomes as absurd as PMs trying to dictate the "how".

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mewpmewp2 922 days ago
If this is the ownership and Engineers ask "How?", there's no one overall to connect the dots. For instance with this ownership dynamic product managers will come up with what and why, and engineers will come up with "how", but no one validates whether the whole thing is worth it considering the technical complexities involved. So scenarios where PMs come up with this and Engineers just ask "How?" there will be initiatives that take a lot of resources, while not giving enough in return.

There's no one to balance the complexity of building this vs the gains achieved.

I think best engineers would be people who also use the product and can give their own insights on this, as well as best PMs are someone who have good knowledge of the technical background and context.

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PaulRobinson 922 days ago
The customer voice - represented by product managers - help join the dots.

It's a team sport, there needs to be communication, but there also needs to be clear areas of ownership.

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