Your engineering and marketing teams are at odds on project goals. How can you align them for success?

If the marketing team has done their due diligence over the course of the project (and before, during the market research phase), they are to be considered the VOC. The true project goal is to produce a product the customers want and need. This is where a customer requirements document is necessary and should be referred to continuously throughout the project. And it is perfectly acceptable for this document to continue to be modified throughout the process as proof of concept and prototypes are shown to the target market and further information is gathered. When these types of conflicts occur, the two groups must realign to understand VOC is what drove the project in the first place.

My experience is that engineers want to design clever things an on occasion have a certain arrogance they know better. Marketing guys have their own pathology: Chasing features particularly if a late entrant to a product space. The solution is painfully simple, yet so few do it. 1: Voice-of-Customer before anyone opens up CAD, with maniacal focus on the customer's desired outcomes. VOC team has to have both Product Management and Engineering participation. 2: A solid, written down set of requirements. If it's not written down, it's just talk.

Three constituents (and only three): The Customer, The Owner/shareholder, and the organization doing the actual work of designing/making the widget. The widget has to address a customer's desired outcome and that same widget has to deliver profitable growth.

As with any relationship, communication and teamwork are key factors in success. Face-to-face meetings are the most effective ways to increase not only this communication flow between different silos of business, but also will increase the sense of trust and respect required for the development of mutually beneficial priorities.

The single best thing to do, in my experience, is to have the key stakeholders participate up front in the Voice-of-Customer exercise. It creates a very healthy "us against the world" mentality when you're chasing a widget that delivers a great customer outcome. And everyone -knows- the customer's desired outcome because they heard it from the horse's mouth... the customer.

Wise compromise has only three inputs: A) Values driven. Aligned with parent organization's values. If those values are ambiguous (as they so often are), then start with safety, the law, and ethics. B) What is the customer's desired outcome? C) What delivers profitable growth?

Spend time identifying the leading indicators and keep score. I recommend _The 4 Disciplines of Execution_ by McChesney et al. Great resource. And make it fun! Product development is the ultimate in delayed gratification. If all you do is look at a bowler chart day in, day out, morale tends to sag.