{"id":122,"date":"2024-06-10T16:40:56","date_gmt":"2024-06-10T15:40:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/happybyname.net\/?p=122"},"modified":"2024-07-15T17:35:27","modified_gmt":"2024-07-15T16:35:27","slug":"what-product-people-can-learn-from-engineers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/happybyname.net\/index.php\/2024\/06\/10\/what-product-people-can-learn-from-engineers\/","title":{"rendered":"What Product people can learn from Engineers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

There is plenty we Product people can learn from the good folks in Engineering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Product and Engineering go together like birds of a feather and yet so often the two groups define themselves by their differences. A case in point: my last post disagreeing with claims that great Product people were often Engineers first. Let\u2019s flip that on its head and instead take a look at what the two can learn from each other – starting with what Product can learn from Engineering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Engineering has taught me a lot<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I grew up around engineers and scientists – and have spent most of my life working with those of the software engineer variety. Here\u2019s just a few key things I reckon we Product people can learn from these good folks and their engineering ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. A problem solving mindset.<\/strong> The biggest learning has to be the way they look at the work and indeed the world around them, their mindset of rational analysis. Family members might be heard to complain that they are \u201calways looking to solve problems\u201d and I\u2019d say this very skill to notice when something isn\u2019t optimal, followed by a willingness to pause and understand it, then to test a series of potential fixes until one seems worth doing, this is the secret sauce.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. A can do attitude.<\/strong> Engineers love fixing things and this I find translates into a can do attitude we can all take inspiration from. Look beyond the grumpy engineer stereotype for a moment to what is really happening on the ground. How many times have you seen a PM take a new problem worth solving to their Tech Lead, cap in hand, knowing the backlog is full for the next 6 months and that the Tech Lead is flat out busy? Just as many I\u2019d suggest as you\u2019ve seen Tech Leads stop and listen, chew over the new problem together and brainstorm options for prioritisation and queuing. It\u2019s easy to become worn down by carrying the weight of a heavy backlog but as a mentor used to say – \u201cthe only way out is through\u201d, so adopting this focus on fixing and the resulting attitude makes good sense.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. A love of learning.<\/strong> Many years ago as I began to lead Product teams, it became clear that something different was happening over there in my partner in crime\u2019s Engineering team. They were running regular Tech town halls, lunch n\u2019 learns and seemed to love sharing something new they\u2019d learned about this or that on Slack or Teams. They seemed to enjoy learning and to see the value in carving out time to keep learning along with the evolution of technology. Product evolves along with people and technology and so we could benefit a lot from adopting this lifelong learning practice into our daily lives too.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  4. Willingness to experiment.<\/strong> To an engineer, life is an experiment and just as they might enjoy tinkering with their snazzy mechanical keyboards or their radio set that talks to the space station in their spare time, they seem to take satisfaction testing ideas at work. The Agile mindset and the Lean ways of working that followed it both encourage rapid cycles of \u201clearn, test, do\u201d and it is worth noticing just how your engineers go about planning, running and learning from experiments on a daily basis. Just how they are slightly less scared of failure due to the need and desire to test out options. Applying this to your daily Product tasks could just be life-changing.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  5. A love of dark places.<\/strong> OK, that\u2019s taking it a bit far but you get the idea. Engineers understand the need for focus time. There is a reason many engineers you know have a shed or a room that they keep full of useful bits (junk to most), yet is unusually calm and quiet. They instinctively seem to understand the value of taking a problem away to their island of calm and taking time to turn it over, see it from all angles and to test out solutions. Before long they will emerge with an often surprisingly simple solution and here\u2019s the rub – that quiet time won\u2019t have seemed very long. They carve out focus time to work on an issue and they don\u2019t need to switch off interruptions very long in order to come up with a great outcome in many cases. We Product people are by our nature right in the midst of the discovery, planning and doing action and therefore are interrupted constantly. It\u2019s well worth taking note of your Engineering colleagues practice of carving out focus time and working even micro-focus blocks into your calendar in order to give problems worth solving the time it takes to solve them.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    Conclusion: Product people can learn a lot from Engineering<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Product and Engineering are often termed the two sides of the same coin and they work closely together, with any luck in complete and dynamic harmony (more on that another day). So it isn\u2019t surprising to note that they share the solving of many user and technology problems, nor to notes that the ways engineers approach solving their share could teach us Product people a thing or two.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    I could continue to wax lyrical on all the things I\u2019ve learned from great engineers I\u2019ve had the privilege to work alongside, and quite likely I\u2019ll share some more learnings soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Meanwhile let me leave you with this – seek first to understand the technical half of the problem solving duo you belong to and doing so you might be surprised what helpful tips you discover.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    There is plenty we Product people can learn from the good folks in Engineering. Product and Engineering go together like birds of a feather and yet so often the two groups define themselves by their differences. A case in point: my last post disagreeing with claims that great Product people were often Engineers first. Let\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":157,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[15,12],"class_list":["post-122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-engineering","tag-product"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/happybyname.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/happybyname.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/happybyname.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happybyname.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happybyname.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/happybyname.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":129,"href":"https:\/\/happybyname.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122\/revisions\/129"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happybyname.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/happybyname.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happybyname.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happybyname.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}