Struggling to bridge the gap between design and engineering teams in product engineering?

Transparency is essential for effective team collaboration. Sharing relevant information, challenges, and progress provides clarity and builds credibility.

Connecting design and engineering teams in product engineering is crucial for seamless collaboration. Start by fostering open communication channels and mutual understanding of each team's goals and challenges. Encourage regular cross-functional meetings to share insights and align on project milestones. Emphasize empathy and respect for each other's expertise to bridge any gaps in understanding. By fostering a culture of collaboration and appreciation for diverse skills, we can innovate more effectively and deliver exceptional products together.

In my experience, the best value we got, to start with a balanced team of business analysts, product managers, tech and sol architects, designers in a room for discussions, whiteboarding, possibilities discussions and eventually some prototypes. We have combined our client partners and our team mates to achieve a very solid start with this process where everyone contributed to the product. It creates a balance and also everyone gets to understand the boundaries. A very nice UX might not a great one to develop, deliver and sustain. It works.

First off, encourage open communication between the teams. Make sure designers and engineers understand each other's perspectives and goals. Provide opportunities for both teams to collaborate early in the process to hash out any potential issues before they become problems. Clearly define roles and responsibilities so everyone knows what they need to do and when. Create a culture of mutual respect and appreciation for each other's expertise.

Get the product engineering team involved early. Invite them to your kickoff, design reviews, DFMEAs, schedule/planning, risk reviews.

1. Establish a unified product vision to align design and engineering teams. 2. Clearly communicate the vision to ensure all team members understand and share the common goal. 3. A unified vision fosters mutual appreciation for each discipline's contributions. 4. Shared goals help navigate the complexities of product development smoothly. 5. A common vision keeps both teams invested in achieving the same end result.

Gotta make sure your goals and performance review quarterlys are aligned well between the two organizations so they work together well ??

One thing I've found helpful is acknowledging upfront how tough it is to change established team dynamics. Previously, when we first tried to implement an interactive process involving our design and engineering teams, we hit major resistance. Designers were protective of their creative space, engineers wary of constant changes. It took months of small wins, honest conversations, and a few project hiccups before people started seeing the value. Persistence was key - we kept at it even when it felt like we were going backwards. In the end, everyone was happier for the change, and the product got better.

1. Iterative collaboration involves repeated cycles of design, prototype, test, and refine. 2. Continuous feedback ensures design aesthetics and engineering functionality evolve together. 3. This process prevents disconnects between envisioned design and practical implementation. 4. Close collaboration through iterations leads to a more harmonious final product. 5. Iterative collaboration fosters constant adjustments and improvements from both teams.

Recently, what we did in the war room where everyone was present to prepare a quick clickable prototype using Adobe XD and demonstrate the product - that worked well. We followed through with Product teams, and got feedback from users and other stakeholders to update, modify and it helped a lot. That prototype, was used for engineering PoDs as first level of visual requirements - which again helped a lot. Of course, that was backed by EPIC, Features, Stories, tasks, grooming ceremonies etc. for deeper realization. That core team, scaled to multiple PoDs of UX, Engineering and the core team remained at horizontal level as stream enablers for synchronized product development and engineering.

I have not seen success without great tooling ecosystem be it communication or engineering. The digital communication ecosystem combined with in person meetings worked wonderfully. Recently, we set up a war room with large scrum boards for visual in person communication. Along with we have team for collaboration, Atlassian stack - like Confluence, Jira for SCRUM management. Git for code / PR etc. Jenkins for pipeline and all were connected. The power of tools lie in integrated information flowing to the right people at right time. The technical project managers were using those effectively for delivering a good product.

1. Communication tools ease interactions between design and engineering teams. 2. Shared digital workspaces and project management software bridge communication gaps. 3. Centralizing information and feedback maintains transparency. 4. These tools reduce misunderstandings and keep everyone aligned. 5. Efficient idea exchange is facilitated throughout the product development cycle.

Maintaining a knowledge base share by both designers and product engineers is really important to future projects. If you have all your rmas and field problems documented then thinking about possible risks on future projects is a lot easier. That takes a culture of making this important.

1. Empathy building fosters understanding of challenges in other disciplines. 2. Engineers participating in user experience research enhance mutual respect. 3. Designers grasping technical limitations promote collaborative problem-solving. 4. Mutual empathy leads to innovative thinking and teamwork. 5. Valuing each other's expertise strengthens team cohesion and creativity.

I think some of the other examples were from the software world. I had worked on imager chips and I think some of the best practices that I encountered were centered around close collaboration early on in the design phase. Most of our products were built off a platform so there was a lot of post learning in problems in the field. It would be important to meet together and brainstorm what could go wrong in the design reviews. Basically getting on the same page. Having good documentation and retrieval systems for that really help with the next product. So once again good prep ??. And all of that supported by good repor. Taking teams out for dinner to talk and learn about each other's job roles.