Alligning teams in a product-driven company

Welcome to the 7th edition of our "Product-Driven Principles" newsletter! In the last edition, we covered the importance of hiring your first product leader and product manager, crafting effective job descriptions, efficiently reviewing candidate CVs, structuring the hiring process, and onboarding your new product team members. We also touched on assessing cultural fit during interviews.

Now that you've got your product dream team in place, it's time to focus on aligning them with the rest of your organization, especially engineering. In this edition, we'll dive into the secrets of fostering seamless collaboration between product and engineering teams.

Table of contents:

• The importance of product and engineering alignment
• Creating a RACI matrix for product teams
• Effective communication channels between product and engineering
• Collaborative goal-setting and prioritization
• Implementing agile ceremonies for better coordination
• Fostering a culture of trust and transparency
• Measuring and optimizing the product development process

The importance of product and engineering alignment

Imagine two scenarios: In the first, your product teams are cross-functional, with product managers, designers, and engineers working together in perfect harmony. Such a team can deliver products and features end-to-end and be fully empowered. They're like a well-oiled machine, cranking out innovative solutions that delight customers and drive business growth.

In the second scenario, your company is structured around guilds – separate product, engineering, and design teams. Teams are usually built around features, not customer problems. There's a constant tug-of-war between product and engineering, with misaligned priorities and miscommunication galore.

I do not see a reason to build a company in the second scenario, unless you have 5k+ employees. It is hard to scale empowered teams, as such a team should be not bigger than 8-10 people. The more teams, the more dependencies.

On the other hand, your guilds, can serve only as a mean to create a community of domain experts. In such case, a guild master, is not leading the guild memebers, rather serves a role of the most senior expert in the domain (i.e., tech leader for engineers). In this case, you can still build cross-functional teams under one leader, destined to solve problems, not as a feature factory.

Which scenario sounds more appealing to you? (For me: it's the first one!)

The relationship between product and engineering leaders

Alignment between product and engineering is crucial for building great products. But it's not just about the teams – it starts at the top. The head of product (your newly hired product leader) and the head of engineering need to be in lockstep. Ideally, they should be sitting right next to each other, collaborating on a daily basis.

While alignment with other teams like marketing and sales is important, the product-engineering relationship is the foundation of a product-driven company. Get that right, and everything else will start falling into a place.

Effective communication channels between product and engineering

Communication is key to keeping product and engineering aligned and fostering trust. Here are some tips:

• Hold regular meetings (weekly or bi-weekly) where product and engineering leaders bring their teams up to speed and remind everyone of the shared goals and objectives. This should be in addition to company-wide meetings like town halls.
• Use collaboration tools like Discord, Slack, Jira, or even Notion to keep everyone on the same page. Create dedicated (private) channels for each product team and have one more general for all of them. I suggest also creating a channel per each feature/product that is currently in the development
• Encourage informal communication and relationship-building. Maybe it's a weekly coffee chat, off-site meetings or a monthly happy hour. The more your product and engineering teams get to know each other as people, the better they'll work together.

Remember, the goal is to create an environment where product and engineering feel like one cohesive team, not two separate entities.

Collaborative goal-setting and prioritization

To ensure everyone is rowing in the same direction, involve engineering in the product discovery process. At the very least, have your tech leads assist product managers in assessing technical feasibility and estimating effort.

When setting goals and priorities, gather input from all relevant teams – product, engineering, design, marketing, sales, etc. This helps create buy-in and ensures everyone understands the "why" behind the work.

Some tips for collaborative goal-setting:

• Use a framework like OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) to align everyone around a shared set of measurable goals
• Hold quarterly planning sessions where each team shares their priorities and identifies dependencies ahead of time. Predict potential conflicts of interet (i.e., a new feature will generate more support requests)
• Use a prioritization framework like RICE (Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort) to objectively evaluate and rank initiatives. Tools like Productboard allows you to create custom prioritization scores with weights,based on your current north star constellation (check my previous article on that) or simply objectives.

The more you can involve engineering (and other teams) in the product strategy process, the more invested they'll be in the outcome.

Creating a RACI matrix for product teams

To ensure clear roles and responsibilities, create a RACI matrix for your product teams. Here's a quick breakdown:

• Responsible: The team members doing the work to complete the feature / product
• Accountable: The person who is accountable for the correct and thorough completion of the task (should be the product team leader)
• Consulted: The people who provide information for the project and with whom there is two-way communication (usually other executives, either by product team memebers or the product leader)
• Informed: The people kept informed of progress and with whom there is one-way communication (general stakeholders, investors, company employees)

By clearly defining who's responsible for what, you can avoid confusion and ensure smooth sailing for your product teams.

Implementing ceremonies for better coordination

Agile ceremonies can help keep product and engineering teams in sync and ensure a steady flow of value to customers. Here are some key ceremonies to consider:

• Daily stand-ups: Quick 15-minute meetings where each team member shares what they worked on yesterday, what they're focusing on today, and any blockers they need help with. If your product people still join engineering stand-ups, convert this into a weekly meeting.
• Sprint planning: A meeting at the start of each sprint where the team selects the work they'll tackle and breaks it down into manageable tasks. This can also be a Kick-off meeting if your sprints are 4 lub 6 weeks, assuming your product leader and engineering leader worked on breaking down project into stories and tasks in your project management tool (i.e., Jira, Monday).
• Sprint reviews: A demo at the end of each sprint where the team shows off what they built and gathers feedback from the key stakeholders. For bigger projects, a proper internal product launch might be in order.
• Retrospectives: A regular meeting (usually every 2-4 weeks) where the team reflects on what went well, what could be improved, and what actions they'll take going forward. There should be another retrospective meeting of the key stakeholders (product leader, engineering leader, CEO, ...) where they discuss on the high level how to improve their collaboration.

Do not create too many ceremonial meetings. It will quickly draw your team's time. The key is to find the right cadence and format that works for your teams. Don't be afraid to experiment and iterate until you find a groove that feels natural and productive.

Fostering a culture of trust and transparency

Alignment between product and engineering isn't just about processes and ceremonies – it's about culture. To build great products, you need a culture of trust, transparency, and psychological safety.

Some ways to foster this culture:

• Lead by example. As a CEO, company executive or a product leader, be open and honest about your own challenges and mistakes. Show vulnerability and encourage others to do the same. Thanks to this you will build trust, and show that you are open for communication
• Create opportunities for cross-functional collaboration and relationship-building. Encourage product managers and engineers to grab coffee, eat lunch together, or even pair up on tasks. You can also connect engineers and product people with sales teams to join the calls with prospects. Another idea is to connect them with the support team, to "eat your own dog food"
• Celebrate wins as a team. When a product launch goes well or a key metric improves, make sure to acknowledge the contributions of both product and engineering. Pizza party is overrated, try to go out for some team building activities. Look what's around your office. Once we went with my team for a VR gaming , but it would not be good for a team of 20+ people. For bigger teams try survival escape rooms (where you divide into smaller groups) like Tepfactor Warszawa
• Encourage a debate and allow to speak up. Create a safe space for people to voice their opinions and challenge assumptions. The best ideas often emerge from constructive conflict. Once you allow people to speak-up, make sure to take their voice into account. If their idea does not seem to be good, try to dig, why they have raised it (what ingited it).

Remember, culture isn't something you can dictate from the top-down. It's something that emerges from the daily interactions and behaviors of your team. As a leader, your job is to model the culture you want to see and create an environment where it can thrive.

Measuring and optimizing the product development process

Finally, to ensure continuous improvement, you need to regularly measure and optimize your internal processes. This is an iterative process that requires ongoing attention and adjustment.

Some key metrics to track:

• Cycle time: How long does it take to go from idea to shipped product? Was it delayed?
• Feature adoption: How many customers adapted this feature in the first 30 days? How happy are your customers with your products? Are they achieving their desired outcomes?
• Team morale: How engaged and motivated are your product and engineering teams to build this feature? Do they feel like they're making progress and having an impact? How is your team's morale at the end of the cycle, when the feature is ready to launch - are they burned out?

In addition to tracking metrics, make sure to gather qualitative feedback from your teams. Schedule regular 1:1s, conduct surveys company-wide, and create open forums for people to share their thoughts and ideas.

Use this feedback to identify areas for improvement and experiment with new processes and practices. The goal is to create a culture of continuous learning and iteration, where everyone is empowered to suggest and implement changes.

Wrap-up

Aligning product and engineering teams is no easy feat, but it's essential for building great products and driving business growth. By fostering a culture of:

• collaboration,
• trust and transparency,
• effective communication channels and agile ceremonies,
• continuously measuring and optimizing your processes,

you can create a product development machine that's unstoppable.

But don't just take our word for it – put these principles into practice and see the results for yourself. And if you haven't already, make sure to subscribe to my newsletter for more product-driven insights and tips.

In the next edition, we'll be diving into establishing product principles that will guide your team to success.