Is a silo mentality holding back your product development?

Having worked with several product and engineering teams over the past couple of years, I often see the same old habit holding companies back. Typically companies think about each team as serving a particular function i.e. they have a distinct role. For example, when it comes to product marketing and engineering the following roles are usually defined:

Product writes requirements, passes them to engineering. Engineering assess resourcing and begin the build. This is often broken down further with teams given labels to define their roles.

Product is known as the ‘what’ and engineering as the ‘how’. Product is meant to give clear specifications that engineering follow through to delivery. The reality is that this line of delineation doesn’t actually work.

Let’s look at an example. In a recent project we worked within the product team to define a new product and service wrap that would include some messaging and booking functionality. We were very clear on what we wanted and believed that once handed to engineering we’d be ready to right size resources and begin work. The challenge came when engineering pushed back on the requirements believing they weren’t as effective as they could be. In subsequent conversations, our colleagues in engineering offered different solutions and ideas that still delivered against our intended outcomes. Having shared their ideas we went back to the drawing board and eventually adopted their approach to the product changes we wanted to see.

Engineering were able to grasp our ambition and understood that there were better ways to tackle the problems we were trying to solve. They knew of different technologies, hacks and shortcuts that ultimately meant our requirements weren’t fit for purpose.

So what did we learn here?

Well that simply our old world view of product (the what team) telling engineering (the how team) what to do wasn’t going to deliver the world class products we needed.

Instead we’re changing how we work. We’re bringing engineering further up in our planning cycle to help us craft our vision and requirements from the very beginning. By doing this we’re building a single team that is built to execute more effectively. These working groups will eventually help us move and pivot faster than ever before. We’re jettisoning our old view of the world, adopting agile and removing the pigeon holes we’d stuck our colleagues into.

With any product or service development comes the need to engage teams with clear roles and responsibilities. This post isn’t suggesting a free for all in terms of defining the requirements but it is calling for companies to better align product marketing and engineering teams. There’s also opportunities to be gained by seconding engineers into product teams. Doing so will reap significant benefits and reduce the fallout and blame game that inevitably comes when a product or service fails.

At Strategy Activist we challenge companies to approach work in new and different ways. We like to break down long standing harmful beliefs and reimagine the status quo. We do this to help clients become more effective at delivery. To learn more about what we do and how we can help your business visit us at www.strategyactivist.com or call us on +44 7786063053.