Quick Tips

Planning and Estimating

Product Managers sometimes talk about their colleagues in Engineering as though they came from a different planet.  But even with goodwill and the best of intentions, effectively communicating between the two functions can be a challenge – especially while they’re working to develop a new product. Both functions depend upon each other to achieve success. Here are some tips from a recent PSN member roundtable meeting as shared by panelists Terri Parasida, Manager of Technical Product Management with Cardinal Health, Ken Kolenik Product Manager with Invivodata, and Al Biglan, Director of Software Engineering with Vocollect.

• Use the process.  If you have a Stage-Gate process or some other checkpoint process, the product manager and the engineering manager will each need to answer certain questions.  Bring those answers to the table, make sure everyone is in alignment, and then move on to the next step.  It’s critical to put some structure in place in order to pass those checkpoints along the way.
• Follow the map.  When you have to have a vision, there are many different paths to realize that vision; that’s the reason for a product roadmap.  You will need to re-evaluate them periodically – quarterly is great, so is half a year.  But it can’t change every day; if you make a roadmap that’s up for debate the day after you make it, there’s no point in making one.
• Use tactical roadmaps.  You have to have a line of sight toward what you want to achieve; if you don’t, you can’t steer the ship.  But there are both longer-term strategic roadmaps that span, say, three years, and shorter-term tactical road-maps that show what you’re going to do over six to nine months.  Make them highly visible to the engineering group to get Engineering on board.  They understand that things can’t be static, but if changes affect the business and revenue plan or objective in the marketplace, Engineering needs to know that.
• Break it down.  Don’t dictate to engineering; that’s not going to work; there has to be give and take.  If you act authoritarian, you’re going to get an unrealistic estimate.  Engineering has a whole code of uncertainty that works against getting reliable estimates on too much in a given time frame.  You have choices that you need to relate back to market needs.  Break it into workable chunks so you can plan for multiple releases or to do a preliminary introduction of a product.
• Request a features plan.  Give enough information to the engineers so they know what you need.  Then give them an opportunity to group things logically and create thoughtful time estimates.  Ask for a ‘cafeteria plan’ so that they can tell you for each particular set of features what it’s going to require in time and resources.  Then you can talk about what features to do.
• Use facts, not opinions.  Product managers can’t simply come in with their own opinions.  They have to represent the market and the company and the products.  Facts are friendly.  You need to bring facts to the table to say: these are reasons why there’s a priority on this product or a priority on that feature.  Those are decisions which need to be driven externally.
• Be choosy.  Be more specific with the most important product features. It should be easy to go into detail about them. As you start trying to use that information and have dialogue between the two groups, the estimates for all features will get better.
• Plan fortnightly.  Demonstrate what you’ve done every two weeks.  That’s a timeframe large enough to get something tangible done.  Over two weeks, you know exactly what your work schedule is.  But it’s small enough that you can understand and estimate it.  So break a larger project into smaller pieces with shorter duration metrics and time estimates.
• Make a fist.  Adopt what some call the ‘Fist of Five.’  For any decision that has to be made by the team, everybody votes with their fist.  Five fingers is unbridled support.  One finger is ‘No way.’  No one ever gets all fives, but it’s a way to go around and take the temperature.
• See where you stand.  Every few weeks, go in to Engineering to see where you are, what issues you’re having, what needs to be defined, and how they impact your estimates. Then, realign, reset, re-estimate and reprioritize.  If you’re going to have a new release every six months, you can’t go six months without that sort of contact.
• Be frank.  If you miss a deadline, go back to the team and say: Tell me what I need to do as a product manager to make a better estimate.  Schedule post-release meetings and discuss it.  Encourage frankness and honesty so that if you messed up and failed to give engineering enough information, they can tell you so.  That helps build trust with the engineering team.
• Look forward.  If you get to the point where you’re in a defensive mode about the estimate you made six months to a year ago, and find yourself defending the requirements and the estimates that were given back then, you’re probably spending too much time looking backwards.
• It’s not all hard. You can sometimes get so involved in a company’s formal development processes and paperwork that it hinders what you need to do to move forward.  But you have to remember that you’re still working with people and that you need to form good personal relationships with them.  Pay attention to the softer things. So, for example, recognize people for a job well done.

Collaboration Between Product Management and Engineering Quick Tips Series:

• Part I of II: Building Trust and Credibility
• Part II of II: Planning and Estimating
  

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