Why developers should collaborate with Product Managers

Nowadays we are seeing layoffs everywhere and providing value to the product you’re building is key.

So let’s start by examining some KPIs that leadership might be looking at to determine if your team adds value!

1. Productivity: This KPI measures how efficiently the team is working.

   1. Track metrics such as the number of tasks completed.

   2. Bugs created/fixed.

2. Quality: Quality is an important KPI for any team that creates a software product team.

   1. Bugs found in testing

   2. Customer satisfaction scores

   3. Feedback from stakeholders to determine the quality of the team's work.

3. Time to market: This KPI measures how quickly the team can deliver products to market.

   1. The time it takes to release a new product

   2. The number of product releases per year

   3. Speed of feature delivery

4. Innovation: Innovation is an important KPI for teams that are working on new products or features.

   1. Product ideas generated

   2. The number of successful new product launches

   3. Product/features adoption.

As you already identified some of those KPIs would be dependent on what the Product Manager decides to build, the time it takes the development team to build, and if they add value to the user and business.

Now let’s say that you don’t collaborate with your PM and he/she can come to the team with a solution to be built. This carries a lot of problems like:

1. What if a solution for those ideas cannot be made by the current team's capabilities?

   1. For instance, what if we need AI experts?

2. What if the idea takes months to be built?

   1. Delay time to value.

   2. Risk of shifting business priorities and in the end the team didn’t deliver anything.

3. What if it’s an unfeasible idea?

4. Does it depend on external teams/vendors?

5. What if the proposed solution doesn’t solve the problem?

If you already reach this point, let me tell you. They added you too late in the process!

Collaboration between product managers and developers is crucial for the success of any software development project. Product managers and developers have different roles, but both play important roles in creating and delivering high-quality software products.

There are two actions you can take to improve this situation:

1. Define clear roles and responsibilities

   1. Product managers should focus on defining the product vision, goals, and requirements, while developers should focus on designing and building the product. Clearly defining each person's role will help to avoid confusion and ensure that everyone is working towards the same goal.

2. Ask the PM to involve you early in the process.

   1. Developers have valuable insights into the technical feasibility of product features and can provide feedback on the design and implementation of product requirements. Product managers should involve developers in the product planning process to ensure that the product requirements are feasible and to get their input on the best way to implement features.

3. Communicate regularly

   1. Effective communication is essential for successful collaboration. Product managers and developers should communicate regularly to ensure that they are on the same page. Product managers should keep developers informed of any changes in product requirements or priorities, and developers should provide regular updates on the status of development.

4. Emphasize teamwork

   1. Collaboration between product managers and developers should be based on teamwork. Both parties should work together to achieve a common goal and should be willing to compromise and make adjustments when necessary. Teamwork fosters a sense of shared ownership and accountability, which can lead to better outcomes.

5. Develop a product mindset

   1. Start to wonder if the things you build provide value to the end user and how much time it would take. how are you going to roll out the features? and so on.

Ideally, when the PM involves you, there is a clear problem statement and business constraints.

With that information, you can provide input in any technical constraints.

And once you have all of that information and it’s crystal clear, all parts can start to brainstorm solutions for the problem.

• If you work on a solution and the problem is still unclear, it’s a red flag you should raise because things can go wrong!

You can define a Value/Complexity matrix to identify what to build https://productfolio.com/value-vs-complexity/

Once you have a clear what to build the next thing you need to work together on is how to break down the solution and provide deliveries at a maximum of 6 weeks.

If a project/feature takes a quarter it’s too risky, since you would not get any feedback from end users, which means you can be building something that can provide zero value or it’s the right solution at all.

In conclusion, the success of a software development project relies not only on the product manager's responsibilities but also on the collaboration and influence of developers, especially regarding factors such as feasible solutions, time to delivery, feature rollout, and user adoption. Therefore, a strong partnership between product managers and developers is crucial for achieving success in software development projects.