Product Trios
Ensuring the Engineering Lead, Product Manager, and Product Designer create a trio that co-creates the roadmap.
Co-Creation vs. Handoffs
Traditional waterfall (and even some agile) processes suffer from the handoff problem: PM defines what, design draws how it looks, and engineering is told how to build it. This siloes knowledge and leads to feasibility issues and wasted cycles.
I advocate for the Product Trio model. The Engineering Lead, Product Manager, and Lead Designer work as equal partners from the discovery phase. Engineers provide feasibility and innovation constraints early, ensuring that what we design is actually buildable and impactful.
The Trio Responsibilities
- Product ManagerFocus: Value & Viability. "Is this useful and can the business support it?"
- Product DesignerFocus: Usability. "can users figure out how to use this?"
- Engineering LeadFocus: Feasibility. "Can we build this? Is there a cheaper/faster way?"
