Will also add, I love the term "product debt" - which we just came up with thru LinkedIn comments (shoutout to Simon Holmes for the inspiration)! I'd add, try to speak about technical debt as product debt. It helps make it a shared responsibility between product and engineering, instead of an engineering only responsibility.
The pleasure is all mine! Your insights from the PM perspective are invaluable and will help a LOT of engineers and leaders to be able to have better discussions on this topic.
We're all selling whether we know it or not! Appreciate the note. PMs would love to know just how much product debt is affecting scalability and delivery over time. 😊 Just gotta frame it right!
Great insights! 👏 Aligning technical debt with business goals is such a smart approach, especially because in usually business users find it difficult to grasp the importance and impact of technical debt. I’ve struggled with this before, and these steps seem really practical. Thanks for sharing!
A product manager will make decisions based on their capabilities and data - customer data and trade-offs, etc.
So for a product manager that comes from a technical or engineering background, they understand and can empathize with the developer experience and what debt can do to slow down delivery and create issues. They better understand technical trade-offs.
If they aren't, and they are more domain SMEs, they need help from engineering to best understand the trade-offs involved technically (that impact the business in more implicit ways than explicit ways). When I see decision making that never prioritizes debt, it's usually because the trade-offs aren't well understood and properly stack ranked.
A word of caution if it isn't broke, don't fix it. I have seen some "upgrades" go terribly wrong (just read about the Sonos upgrade). If it really is needed then a sales job to the PM should be easy (of course it depends on the PM). This is why it is estimate that there is about 300M lines of cobal still in production, it still is working just fine.
Will also add, I love the term "product debt" - which we just came up with thru LinkedIn comments (shoutout to Simon Holmes for the inspiration)! I'd add, try to speak about technical debt as product debt. It helps make it a shared responsibility between product and engineering, instead of an engineering only responsibility.
Happy to chat more about this important topic!
Definitely a great point! This is the LI thread if someone is interested to read it through: https://bit.ly/3Z5OnN0
Thanks for the collaboration Gregor! You are so awesome, and I love learning from you!
The pleasure is all mine! Your insights from the PM perspective are invaluable and will help a LOT of engineers and leaders to be able to have better discussions on this topic.
Selling the "tech debt" stuff to the PMs is crucial. And this is a great strategy to do so, Gregor! 🙌
We're all selling whether we know it or not! Appreciate the note. PMs would love to know just how much product debt is affecting scalability and delivery over time. 😊 Just gotta frame it right!
It's the right thing to do. Ignore it -> and it might become bigger and bigger problem. Glad this resonates Petar!
Great insights! 👏 Aligning technical debt with business goals is such a smart approach, especially because in usually business users find it difficult to grasp the importance and impact of technical debt. I’ve struggled with this before, and these steps seem really practical. Thanks for sharing!
Yes exactly.
A product manager will make decisions based on their capabilities and data - customer data and trade-offs, etc.
So for a product manager that comes from a technical or engineering background, they understand and can empathize with the developer experience and what debt can do to slow down delivery and create issues. They better understand technical trade-offs.
If they aren't, and they are more domain SMEs, they need help from engineering to best understand the trade-offs involved technically (that impact the business in more implicit ways than explicit ways). When I see decision making that never prioritizes debt, it's usually because the trade-offs aren't well understood and properly stack ranked.
A word of caution if it isn't broke, don't fix it. I have seen some "upgrades" go terribly wrong (just read about the Sonos upgrade). If it really is needed then a sales job to the PM should be easy (of course it depends on the PM). This is why it is estimate that there is about 300M lines of cobal still in production, it still is working just fine.
Definitely a good point RJ! It should be always presented as with pros and cons and the pros should outweigh the cons.
As a Product Manager, I approve of this message!
Great to hear that Shreef!