Product and Engineering must be co-equal branches of the organization, if they are not peers, dysfunction will occur.
A functional operating model between product and engineering looks like this1:
- Product identifies opportunities and communicates them in terms of a defined product strategy and defined product value.
- Product places them in a recommended sequence
- Engineering finalizes them to deliver the most value while providing a longer term system over time
Product communicates the value, engineer communicates and pays the cost, sales and marketing provides the value/cost ratio to users.
Anti-patterns
Product over Engineering
When Product is “stronger” than engineering the org is likely to deprioritize stability work (technical debt maintenance, security, etc.) and have difficulty retaining top technical talent. Jack Danger provides more detailed failure modes based on the seniority of the CPO in Executive Engineering pp. 15.
The in-house agency model
Product telling Engineering what to build is akin to product treating engineering as a consultancy agency. This fails because a consultancy is just looking to get paid for the work, whereas two departments within a company have much different equities and horizons1
Engineering over product
When engineering is “stronger” than product the org will be more likely to be blind to the market and focus on weird stuff that doesn’t provide value. Jack Danger provides more detailed failure modes based on the seniority of the CTO in Executive Engineering pp. 14.
1. Danger, J. Executive Engineering: Practical Engineering Theory for Software Leaders. (The Technical Executive, 2024).