Leverage Your Engineers

March 18, 2024

Happy Monday everyone! There is lots going on in the Cleveland Product scene, so let’s get to it!

Article of the Week

You research the opportunity. You know the market. You talked to your customers. You brainstormed solutions with stakeholders. You align your Product with your organization’s mission and vision. But when you and your team go to build the features, the engineering team comes up with roadblocks. It will take to long to build. You have to make compromises on the scope or the design. And when the feature is finally released, customers are not happy. Or the quality is not that high. How did this happen?

You didn’t leverage your engineering team properly.

I recently read an article by Teresa Torres that shares how including engineers in other activities like Product Discovery can improve the way you build products. My three takeaways:

  1. Different Insights - Doing discovery and interviewing customers is the best way to understand your customer and the problems that your Product can solve for them. Involving your engineering team in those discussions not only provides perspective to them, it provides you another set of ears that may hear things that you missed. They also have different experiences that complement your skills and experience, and the skills and experience of your design team.

  2. Build the Best Solutions - Having engineering actively involved earlier will allow you to create the best solutions because you give everyone the benefit of time to reflect on customer interviews and other research efforts. Also, they are really good at technology, since they are the ones building the stuff. As Teresa says, “It’s because they have a depth of knowledge about what’s possible with technology that often surpasses everyone else on the team.“

  3. Delivery Goes Smoother - When engineers are involved with more than just delivery, they are invested in the process, get closer to the problem and the customers, and are viewed as a true partner. All of this makes delivery go much smoother as they are more knowledgeable about the customer, the problem space, the market, and the options that were considered.

Including your engineering team in your Product activities makes your product way better and your customer happier. Isn’t that the whole point?

Recent Events

Thanks to Matt Barcomb for a deep dive into roadmaps at last week’s Cleveland Product event. He shared with us why most roadmaps are not good, what to do to fix it, and how to make the change.

Hope to see you next time!

Product Jobs of the Week

The Product roles at Cleveland companies keep rolling in!

Upcoming Events

  • March 20th - Product Lean Coffee - Product Discovery @ Van Aken Market Hall

  • April 10th - AMA with Lisa Schneider - Go To Market

About the Author

My name is Shawn Leitner. I started the Cleveland Product networking group in 2017, which helps to connect Product professionals around Cleveland, providing them with a forum to network, learn, and share stories. For my day job, I'm a Product Consultant & Coach for Pathfinder Product and help clients implement strong Product practices so they can create products that their teams love building and their customers love using. Connect with me on LinkedIn or feel free to attend one of my events either virtually or in-person. Always up for meeting for a cup of coffee also!