4 Mantras to elevate and empower Product Engineers!

Earlier this year, in February 2022, I shared my views and perspective on the topic of “Customer Experience Driven Product Development” in a webinar hosted by NASSCOM India. Product Development and Product Engineering continue to witness significant investment and spending, across all industries, as every company works to transform itself into a Digital-first Business. Unlike regular software projects, which have a start-to-finish model, successful Digital Products thrive on a highly iterative, Agile, Continuous Feature Delivery and Improvement model, which essentially means the product is always developing and always evolving, as the consumer needs evolve and as the business evolves with it. Towards the end of that webinar, I shared some of our own lessons learned from the trenches, as Builders of Digital Products ourselves.

Here is a snapshot of the six Lessons Learnt that I shared: In this post today, I’d like to focus on Lesson #4 above – “Elevate your Engineers!”

Engineers, or “Product Engineers”, are the Makers, the Builders, the people who build great Digital Products, and bring them to life. They come with different crafts and specializations, and some may focus on different layers of the overall solution stack, but ultimately, what they build, is what consumers interact with, and those interactions ultimately define the “Brand Experience”. So another way of thinking about this, is that Your Brand Experience is pretty much directly in the hands of your “Product Engineers”! Think about that, once more, a bit harder! If Product Engineers are the key to unlocking great Brand Experiences, then as a Product Manager, Digital Leader, or even as a Product Engineering Organization overall, what are you doing to Elevate your Product Engineers!? How are you empowering and enabling them, to build a Great Digital Product? One that consumers will truly love!

Traditional Software Development has unfortunately in many cases, placed Developers and Engineers in the backseat. The guys who write code! That’s how some may think about them. Not necessarily the “sexier” role on the team! Another old-fashioned way of thinking about it again. Hence, traditionally, the focus has been on the more “customer facing roles”! And that, in itself, is a real problem when it becomes to building Digital Products! Product Engineers NOT being customer-facing, is a real issue and a real problem, if you are trying to build a great Digital Product! In this post, I’d like to share 4 Mantras of what you can do to Elevate your Product Engineers if you’re truly on a quest to build a great Digital Product! In all cases, applying the mantras successfully requires the Product Leadership team to discard conventional thinking around the role of Engineers, and instead wholeheartedly embrace the notion of Empowering and Elevating their Engineers, towards enhancing their Impact and contribution to the Product they are ultimately building.

1. Product Engineers are not just Technologists and “Blind Coders”!

Traditional Software Engineering has “slotted” the role of Engineers as the ‘Techies’ aka ‘Nerds’ on the team – the guys who write Code, and are supposed to be very good at it! While that is still very much true and there’s no doubt that engineers need to write solid, high-quality code if you really want them to build a product that your consumers will love, you need to immerse them in the Business Problem they are ultimately going to solve. That essentially means they need to understand how the business works, how the consumers interact with the business, and what is the role of the Product they are building in meeting the business goals. So, for example, if we are building a solution to support Creative Production Workflows, they need to understand those workflows well enough, the key actors and participants in those workflows, what the needs of those creative producers are, and how they will interact with the solution, and what scenarios may happen at runtime during the execution of those workflows. The engineers’ ability to design the best digital product is often proportional to the level of understanding they have of the business process, but that aspect is often overlooked. While a Tech Design document may be a good input to the Engineer to understand the technical specifications of the solution, it is not necessarily enough for them to contemplate and solve the numerous scenarios they need to handle to build a robust product. Hence, Mantra #1 - Immerse your Product Engineers in the business context, the business process workflow, the consumer needs, and the consumer stories. Elevate their role beyond the “Coders” on your team; empower them to take ownership of the Business Problem!

2. Product Engineers are not the people who “cut the rocks”!

Traditional Task Management and Software Project Management methodologies have advocated the idea of Work breakdown and Task breakdown as the most effective way of problem-solving – i.e., taking bigger problems, breaking them down into smaller tasks, farming them out across the team, and then integrating them together. The hidden assumption there is that there are only 1 or 2 “master craftsmen” on the team who really understand the big picture and the end-product that is being built. Whereas the rest of the team is essentially behaving like a “stone cutter” – cutting stones and rocks, i.e., providing the “raw material” as input for the end-product in the form of individual modules and code blocks. However, none of them really develop an appreciation for the End-Product, and the Impact it will have on the Consumers. It is basically the difference between “getting a task done for the sake of that task being done” vs. “getting a task done towards meeting a larger end”. It is also the difference between “Working on a Task” vs. “Working for a Purpose”! Uniting your Engineers around a larger purpose and helping them visualize what that purpose really looks like, in the form of the End-Solution and the impact on the CX, is perhaps the most critical role of the Product Manager on the team! Hence, Mantra #2 – Show your Product Engineers the Big Picture! Help them understand that they are actually “building a cathedral”, not just cutting rocks. Engage them in the Consumer Experience, the overall Solution, the Product Architecture, and all the different pieces. Get each engineer on the team to visualize the End Product and the Complete Solution; not just the module they are building!

3. Product Engineers are not the “back office” people on your team!

Traditional hierarchies within a Software Project team have encouraged the notion that only a certain set of roles on the team are customer-facing, whereas the others are not really meant to be. Business Analysts, Solution Architects, Product Managers, Scrum Masters, etc., all get to interact with the Clients or Client Proxies on a regular basis. Engineers often get “second-hand” information from these roles and are rarely exposed directly to the client. That might work out in Traditional Software teams, but it tends to crumble down quickly, in the context of a Product Development team. If you truly want to empower your Engineers, you need to get comfortable giving them the “Front Seat”. That means they need to be involved and engaged in key conversations around Requirements and Use Cases. They need to work closely with the Solution Architect and Tech Architect to make decisions about how to design and build the product. They need to work closely with Operational Leaders on the business team to understand how to optimize the solution for better adoption. And they need to work closely with UX Leads and Designers to understand how end users will interact with the product. What this does mean for Digital Product Leaders, is that they need to be comfortable with mentoring and grooming the engineers, taking “calculated risks” in giving them stretch roles and tasks, and shadowing them along the way! Leaders need to prioritize “empowerment and enablement” over “control and structure”, which is always easier said than done! When done well, all of this will empower your engineers to build a better digital product, however, it will also drive their own growth, and ultimately result in a better sense of fulfillment for them! Hence, Mantra #3 - Make your Product Engineers the “Front Office Team”! Ensure they have enough facetime with Clients and Product Managers. If possible, even with the End Consumers themselves! Engage them in all the Requirements workshops. Involve them in Story Grooming with the Product Managers. Please encourage them to lead Sprint Demo Sessions and showcase their in-progress features to clients.

4. Product Engineers are ultimately human beings, seeking to learn and grow. They are not “machines”, designed to do only 1 thing well!

Traditional Software Development teams have thrived on the notion of “Specialization” – i.e., in-depth expertise in a particular skillset or technology, usually mapping to one particular layer of the solution stack – for example, React.js Front-End Developers, vs. Express / Node.js Back-End Developers. While I am not trying to suggest that Specialization is not valuable (it certainly still has its place), at the same time, when specialization translates into Product Engineers working on the same tech, the same stack, the same layer, and the same framework, again and again, feature after feature, Sprint after Sprint, then you know you are not really enabling their growth. Most products (at least most well-thought-through products) have a reasonable shelf life and validity for a few years at least, hence if you want your Product Engineers to stay committed, motivated, and contribute positively to the Product over that entire duration, then as Digital Product Leaders, you do need to find avenues to enable their learning and growth. There is a good reason why there is so much noise around Full Stack Developers, and it’s not just because those individuals are rare to find and in high demand, but it’s also because those are the individuals who can truly take ownership of a “Feature” from soup to nuts. And those are also likely the same Product Engineers who will seek avenues to grow themselves, along with the Product. Hence, as Product Managers or Digital Product Leaders, you need to invest in these Engineers. Whether it is via structured learning and training programs, certification goals and badges, on-the-job cross-skilling opportunities, or exposure to different facets of the solution, it is essential to enable their growth. Ultimately, this will all result in a better product, as they will then proactively seek new ways to refine the product, apply new technologies and solution patterns, and adopt modern frameworks and standards to the product they are building. Product Engineers seek growth, challenge, and opportunity to learn new skills, expand their horizons, and stay relevant, at all times. Hence, Mantra #4 -Product Leaders need to empower Product Engineers with the right opportunities and avenues, to help them become more T-shaped, and ultimately, more Pi-shaped!

Follow these guiding Mantras to elevate, empower and enable your Product Engineers for a great Digital Product experience.

I’ll end this post with an honest confession! I don’t believe I am doing enough right now (or at least I think I could do more!) as a Digital Product Engineering Leader, in applying these mantras, and empowering my Product Engineers. I’ll let you introspect, reflect and answer the same for yourself! Some of this is indeed easier said than done. But then, as Digital Product Leaders, we do need to keep thinking about this, and keep finding ways to make continuous improvements, as small and tiny as they may be!

Would love to hear your views on how you’re tackling this within your own Product Development teams, what is working well, and what is not!