What do you do if software designers and product managers clash over project priorities?

It is important to understand standpoint of Designer and Product Manager by the other party and develop appreciation and respect towards each other activities.

While PM presents the backlog with priorities He/She should explain reasoning behind priorities. Grooming sessions and ore planning sessions can be used to see if certain feature requires more effort due to technical reasons and same can be planned appropriately. This way conflicts can be avoided and both parties interest can be met.

Encourage open and honest communication between the two parties. Often, conflicts arise due to misunderstandings or lack of clear communication. Ensure both sides have the opportunity to express their perspectives and concerns.

Develop clear criteria for prioritizing project tasks or features. This can help eliminate subjective biases and provide a framework for making decisions based on objective criteria.

It is important to understand the overreaching product goal and direction, and where you want to end up with the offering long term. Decisions should be made to keep that in mind, there is never a straight path to the vision, and it can change, but as you make short term, medium term and long-term decision, you need to keep the long-term strategic direction in mind. Short term, stabilization secure the base, medium term expands the base of customers, long term disrupts. Of course, short, medium and long term mean different things to different industries, but the mission should be common to all and negotiate your priorities based on the full picture.

Backlog ranking is usually done keeping interests of customer and other stakeholders. Hardly development team influences the ranking. To avoid or resolve conflicts on ranking, an initial discussion with development team helps PM to negotiate and agree on priorities with Customers and/or other stakeholders.

Mediators can help to understand the view point of both parties and communicate amicably. Often Architects are the right people for this job.

When the conflict fails to resolve, compromise from both sides either in terms of descoping features or agreeing to less effective solution with clear roadmap if improvements can help.

one of the things i find most usefull, is to reach both goals by working agile. setting small steps to finaly achiveing the targets. working this way sets each side at ease

one of the things i find most usefull, is to reach both goals by working agile. setting small steps to finaly achiveing the targets

The first question should be "why?". You can do a RCA to understand the cause. But there's something more important, this usually is a communication problem. If you need to create a product, you have stakeholders, and those stakeholders with specific needs should provide you with the information for a roadmap, meaning that the priorities are set by stakeholders. If there's a problem following that, either never happened (nobody talked to the stakeholders), or the prioritization never happened, or nobody is paying attention. Seat with the team, review the roadmap, or create it along with the stakeholders. After that, you'll have a guide to keep working, priorities and basically everything to have the problem solved.