I'd love clarity on point 2 - [All project status updates must be channeled through the Engineering Lead. Product must never try to debrief individual engineers. Instead, the Product Lead and the Engineering Lead should meet regularly: Twice a week is usually about right. Use a matrix like the table above as a framework for discussing progress.] // Does this assume a well defined product or project? Early in projects, I feel like there is daily learning and you want to identify those issues as early as possible. How do you prevent individuals from being bottlenecks of communication? Isn't the purpose of good documentation and well written stories and good Jira or any other tasks platform to provide transparency? I think there is a middle ground between restricting communication in this fashion and being annoying as a PM on the status of tickets - no one likes that. This may be better suited to discussion over beers / whiskey 😁
Great question! 100% agreed that there ought to be some shared task management board, and would additionally suggest that Engineering teams should have their own internal boards to which Product folks have read-only access. (I personally prefer Clubhouse (https://clubhouse.io/) over Jira or Asana.) Transparency and trust are critical. Weekly sprints, including sprint reviews attended by PMs, are not unreasonable during the early days of a project.
The problem is not that product folks annoy engineers: On the contrary, people often love showing off their work and conversing with coworkers from other disciplines. The problem is an impedance mismatch: Engineering ICs are personally responsible for particular trees, whereas leads have responsibility for the forest as a whole. PM/IC briefings often have the unintended consequences of (1) misleading the PMs and (2) distracting the engineers from tasks they ought to be laser-focused on. I can tell you some real-life horror stories about this that will make beer shoot out your nose.
Regarding your totally reasonable concern about individuals becoming bottlenecks of communication: Leads aren't middlemen between engineers and product. They're often the only people who actually have the info you care about, and can give you something like an accurate impression of current progress.
Happy to grab the beverage of your choice any time!
I'd love clarity on point 2 - [All project status updates must be channeled through the Engineering Lead. Product must never try to debrief individual engineers. Instead, the Product Lead and the Engineering Lead should meet regularly: Twice a week is usually about right. Use a matrix like the table above as a framework for discussing progress.] // Does this assume a well defined product or project? Early in projects, I feel like there is daily learning and you want to identify those issues as early as possible. How do you prevent individuals from being bottlenecks of communication? Isn't the purpose of good documentation and well written stories and good Jira or any other tasks platform to provide transparency? I think there is a middle ground between restricting communication in this fashion and being annoying as a PM on the status of tickets - no one likes that. This may be better suited to discussion over beers / whiskey 😁
Great question! 100% agreed that there ought to be some shared task management board, and would additionally suggest that Engineering teams should have their own internal boards to which Product folks have read-only access. (I personally prefer Clubhouse (https://clubhouse.io/) over Jira or Asana.) Transparency and trust are critical. Weekly sprints, including sprint reviews attended by PMs, are not unreasonable during the early days of a project.
The problem is not that product folks annoy engineers: On the contrary, people often love showing off their work and conversing with coworkers from other disciplines. The problem is an impedance mismatch: Engineering ICs are personally responsible for particular trees, whereas leads have responsibility for the forest as a whole. PM/IC briefings often have the unintended consequences of (1) misleading the PMs and (2) distracting the engineers from tasks they ought to be laser-focused on. I can tell you some real-life horror stories about this that will make beer shoot out your nose.
Regarding your totally reasonable concern about individuals becoming bottlenecks of communication: Leads aren't middlemen between engineers and product. They're often the only people who actually have the info you care about, and can give you something like an accurate impression of current progress.
Happy to grab the beverage of your choice any time!