Telling Stories With Engineering

This slide explains the importance of product and engineering working together and telling the story together at the end.

Slide highlighting the importance of product and engineering sharing the same script

Here are my thoughts on what I have learned about this three roles and two companies after first drawing this picture.

Pros

• The line of integrity: This still chimes as really important, Product, UX and Engineering need to all be align on what is possible else it s miserable world of broken promises and problems half solved.
• Telling the story together: All too often the engineering contribution is left out when the story is told, at best this is disingenuous at worst this can lead to disengagement of the team from the customer problem, making it harder to solve the next one. It also re-enforces a product management characteristic as the fix it role, the gets stuff done role. Undoubtably Product managers need energy and drive, but its too easy for this to eclipse the role of the team. Forcing the story to be told together checks this.

Cons

• There is not enough about the customer problem and understanding this. At the time I made this slide it was all about building internal trust in the prod/tech function and improving internal communications. But that said there is always a need to sell and update internally. Often more so if you are solving consumer problems as all too often people need to be reminded constantly of why these are more important than pet projects and c-level feature requests.