How to stop the battle between Product Managers and Designers
A thin line between love and hate separates Product Managers and Designers. Product Managers don’t follow why so many details are essential, while Designers don’t understand why Product Managers want to remove them. Generally, Product Managers aim to learn fast, while Designers seek to invest significant time in a unique experience.
The tension between Product Managers and Designers
Is a conflicting interaction between Product Managers and Designers the way to build delightful products? For sure, not. At some point in time, Product Managers and Designers find no motivation to help each other: the more misunderstandings, the less collaboration.
Product Managers and Designers see the importance of details differently, which leads to many disappointments.
I’ve worked as a Product Manager in several different scenarios, and I often had misunderstandings with Designers, which slowed the team down. However, it also helped me learn how to work as a team. Product Managers and Designers are not enemies. Yet, misalignments bring significant tension to this relationship, holding us back from thriving.
As a Product Manager, I found some behaviors and attitudes to avoid to achieve terrific outcomes as a team.
#1 - Let the Designer out in the beginning
“We may not waste a Designer’s time now, and it’s just an idea.” This is how problems begin.
Product Managers face many opportunities. We need to choose which one to pursue and which to drop. Such decisions happen daily. A problem starts once Product Managers decide to evaluate some ideas in-depth. How to proceed with the idea is vital to the outcome. A wrong choice is to continue alone because Product Managers lack a broad enough perspective.
I love getting different perspectives from the beginning. I believe working collaboratively, we can identify better opportunities. In Agile, the 3 Amigos approach suggests involving Business, QA, and Development from the start. My approach is to add a Designer, as well. It brings an important perspective to the discussion.
3 Amigos is a complementary practice that involves a discussion between the 3 main perspectives involved in the delivery. This discussion looks at a Product Backlog Items from the perspective of the Business, Test & Delivery.— Alasdair Macleod, 3 Amigos Bytesize Agile
Once we have an idea, we should ask, “How can we make it better?” I approach ideas within an informal conversation. Generally, I invite a Designer and a Developer for a coffee, and then I share what’s on my head. I learned that a 30 minutes informal talk produces excellent outcomes. Collaboration fosters innovation.
“No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world.” — Robin?Williams
#2 - Focus on the solution instead of?the problems
The perfect way to kill a Designer’s motivation is to bring a solution to discuss.
What do designers really want from product managers? To start, I can tell you that we like ourselves some autonomy. We enjoy using our heads to really think through problems and come up with neat, clean and innovative solutions — Jess Eddy, What do designers really want from product managers?
I know this pitfall pretty well; I’ve fallen to it already. Therefore, I start the talk by describing the problem, which leads to a productive and engaging conversation with the Designers. Once Product Managers bring solutions, Designers have no idea what we are talking about. This approach is limiting and unproductive. That’s why we should avoid it.
#3 - Priorities without explanation
Designer: What’s our priority?
PM: Our priority now is customer acquisition. This is the most critical topic.
Designer: Hum. I thought we should focus on retention so that our Customers stay with us. Acquiring more customers without retaining the current ones sounds wrong to me. Could you explain your decision? Please.
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PM: Well, customer retention is also necessary, but only after sustainable growth in customer acquisition. My gut tells me to keep customer acquisition as our priority.
Unfortunately, many Product Managers make decisions without criteria. It’s the Product Manager’s responsibility to ensure the team understands the motivation behind the decision. Once Product Managers cannot explain why they made their decisions, it will be hard to get the other team members committed.
Lack of transparency increases the lack of commitment.
#4 - Not validating assumptions
Launch and forget. That’s the perfect way to fall into the feature creep trap.
Maximizing the business value is the goal of a Product Manager, yet, many times, we don’t measure the outcome. I call this scenario the Feature Factory. We produce features, deliver, and forget about it. Where does value come in? At best, it pleases stakeholders by fulfilling their wishes, but those may not be the same wishes of end-users.
A great Product Manager has a value-driven mindset. Thus, they create assumptions and define success factors so that it is possible to evaluate if the assumption was valid or not. If you don’t validate assumptions, you’re flying blind, and you will eventually crash the plane.
More collaboration between the Designer and Product Manager produces higher value to the business and the users.
A designer, to better inform their design decisions, needs to analyze and figure out what needs to be tracked, why should they be tracked, and lastly what we aim to get out of tracking them — Adhithya, A Designer’s Guide to Working with Product Managers
#5 - Abrupt changes in the Product?Backlog
Without a clear Product Vision, everything can become a priority.
Upgrade your user, not your product. Don’t build better cameras — build better photographers — Kathy?Sierra
Many Product Managers work without a Product Vision, which holds them back from defining a clear direction. The Product Backlog becomes a mess because abrupt changes often happen, which demotivates everyone on the team.
When you lack an inspiring vision, you will end up building pointless things nobody needs.
#6 - Product Managers as the wireframe masters
Do you want to limit and bias a Designer? Then bring them wireframes.
I used to create detailed wireframes because I worked for a long time without a Designer. Once I started working with Designers, I had problems because I kept preparing wireframes. Designers were mad with me.
When we get mockups from you before we’ve had a chance to think about the problem ourselves, it can bias and limit how we approach solving a problem. This makes it harder for us to think creatively — Jess Eddy, What do designers really want from product managers?
An excellent Product Team has multiple skills. Consequently, everyone focuses on their strengths. For example, Product Managers focus on leading and identifying opportunities to create value. Then, instead of bringing wireframes to Designers, get them problems to solve; this will motivate them to find alternatives to tackle the problem.
Wrap-up
Product Managers and Design can succeed together. Each of them needs to focus on their strengths and trust each other. Then the outcome speaks for itself. A healthy relationship has the following characteristics:
Enterprise Product, Strategy & Continuous Discovery
2 年Great points, David Pereira - I think it’s fair to do some rough whiteboard flows & sketches to allow for quality discussions with Design counterparts, but doing full-on wireframes may be going too far. I’ve definitely made that mistake. Involving the tech lead / architect perspective is also really important to ground the solutions in feasibility - what can the team actually build, given the tech stack, team, and time available…
Chief Technologist
2 年Here is the challenge from my perspective. * Product Management is often too focused on Feature Requests from Customers (inlove with the solution not the problem) * UX and Engineering do not focus on finding the simpilest solution that requires the least amount of work, that solves the problem and allows for learning and even better ideas to emerge.