Finding the Seams Between Roles
A great working relationship among the software product development “triad” can make or break a team. The triad is usually defined as the product manager, designer, and an engineer (likely, the tech lead). To have a great relationship between these three people, it’s fundamental to have clarity about each other’s roles and responsibilities.
Without that clarity, I’ve seen teams spend effort and time on redundant tasks while other important work is missed or delayed. The more important reason is that frustration can build between team members. Trust can erode between people if they don’t know who’s responsible for what and aren’t sure who to count on to deliver. Ultimately, the lack of clarity on roles & responsibilities decreases how effectively your team works together and delivers.
Roles have started to blend as well, particularly as people transition from one function to another (Eng → PM or PM → Designer, etc.), combining their diverse skill sets and backgrounds. This post talks about the “rise of the product managing designer,” this one talks about the PM-designer tension and this third one has a handy Venn diagram of various team leader responsibilities (mainly the overlap between PM, tech lead, and engineering manager). While there are definitely advantages to having multiple skill sets, this can also be a source of tension if it’s not clear how you will leverage your other skills. For example, if you’re a PM who used to be a software engineer and you’re always jumping into the code, you risk disempowering the software engineers (and also risk not working on the right things).
Below are some of the potential areas of overlap between PM, engineering, and design. Finding the seams between these roles on your team will help everyone work together more effectively.
When to establish role clarity
It’s never not a good time. The easiest time to do so is when you have a new factor: a new person joining the team, a new project kickoff, or a new planning cycle. But those aren’t the only times — periodic check-ins are always valuable, even if you haven’t yet had this issue. Just because you think everything is clear and going smoothly, doesn’t necessarily mean everyone does and you might catch small issues before they snowball into larger ones.
How to establish role clarity
It’s essential to establish a relationship between the product manager, designer, and tech lead or lead engineer. As PM, I often took the lead on setting up recurring 1:1s with every member of the team to get to know them, their working style, skills, and strengths. Among the triad (and with other key collaborators), if you can establish regular practices that allow you to work on how you work, those are great times to evaluate what’s working and not working and make adjustments.
Questions to ask each other to help establish clarity among the triad:
What does “standard” ownership look like for this role at this company?
What assumptions does everyone have about these roles? Could be based on prior companies and experiences.
Which responsibilities fall into a gray area? It might be broader team things like planning team activities/outings.
What’s harder than it should be? What’s taking longer than it should? When do we feel “stuck”?
What does our team need right now? More strategy, research, or a greater focus on execution?
What type of work do you enjoy most? What do you feel like you’re really good at? What do you want to grow in?
Where do we need outside support? More resources or support from another team or leader?
Having a pulse on these things will allow everyone to stay on the same page and identify where improvements are needed.
Creating some regular practices where you can revisit how you work also ensures proactiveness instead of reactiveness. Below are some of the practices I’ve found most helpful:
Do a personality/communication styles test and discuss your strengths and natural tendencies and how they help or hinder your team (I’ve had good experiences with StrengthsFinder and DISC)
Have regular 1:1 meetings with the people you work closely with to talk about how you work together — works for any combination of people on the team
Have full team meetings to talk about how you work
Conduct team health check-ins (at least 2x per year) and retrospectives (bi-weekly or monthly)
Set up clear guidelines for how you communicate about work (stand-ups, planning meetings, documentation, etc.)
Build empathy for each other and understand each other’s roles by collaborating closely
But wait, shouldn’t this clarity be provided by the company/managers?
Quite possibly, yes. But I bet, even in the most put-together organizations, there isn’t always 100% agreement on who is responsible for what. There’s a huge “it depends” factor, often based on the skills, experience, and interests of the individuals, as well as the organization itself.
Organizational design for cross-functional teams is still in flux — it also depends on many factors, including the size and stage of the company, the type of products, leadership perspectives, and more. It’s possible that the reporting structure for the roles in a “product triad” could each report to someone different, the same person, or some combination. No solution will ever be perfect though so you need to learn how to work with the structure you have.
If there is a responsibility that doesn’t seem to fall “naturally” to one of the roles or you cannot come to an agreement among yourselves, that’s a good time to pull in managers or look at what the organization guidance is on ownership of that task. For example, if your team does not have a dedicated researcher, does the PM or designer handle research logistics? You can either decide based on who has the best skills and time for it or alternatively, who wants to learn how to do it. If no one really wants to do it, maybe rotate the responsibility. The worst is when it just defaults to the person who’s most willing to pick up team slack - don’t let that happen.
Working to clarify roles and responsibilities can be awkward, especially if it’s not yet established clearly company-wide. There may also be cases where multiple people want to work on something — that’s okay, too! Acknowledging where there’s overlapping skills or interests allows you to better collaborate or divide and conquer, depending on what the team and business needs. The best way to ensure that your whole team is rowing in the same direction is to ensure everyone knows what part they play and that they can trust and lean on each other for the rest.
Have you dealt with overlapping responsibilities on your team? How did you handle it? I’d love to hear!