How to Balance Product and Engineering Priorities

Product and Engineering teams often find themselves at odds when trying to balance product and engineering priorities. They struggle to decide how much “product” and how much “engineering” work should be done in a particular time period. Typically, the Product team advocates for features that benefit the customers directly and increase company revenue and profitability. On the other hand, Engineering wants to prioritize work that, in the long run, also benefits the customers and the company, but whose immediate value is harder to see. This includes security, infrastructure, refactoring, DevOps work, etc. Ignoring Product priorities will lead to fewer customers, reduced revenue, and ultimately reduced profitability. Ignoring Engineering work will lead to technical debt, security issues, quality issues, and ultimately expose the company to risks. This slows down Engineering production, which will lead to fewer customers, reduced revenue, and ultimately reduced profitability.

Definitions of “Product” and “Engineering” Work

For the purposes of this article, we will use the following definitions:

Product Work: Features that directly enhance the product. They add new functionality or improve existing ones to directly benefit the end user. When this work is completed, customers reap an immediate and visible benefit. This is the main work that the Product team advocates for and prioritizes.

Engineering Work: Work that indirectly enhances the product or directly enhances the software development process. Examples include improving the CI/CD pipeline to deploy faster, addressing security issues to prevent future breaches, re-architecting major software components to make them more extensible and easier to maintain, refactoring brittle and difficult code, etc. The Engineering team is usually the only one who advocates for this work, as they are the only ones dealing with the technical complexities of the product and the SDLC.

The Problem in Product vs Engineering Prioritization

In many cases, the Product team is focused on their priorities, while the Engineering team is focused on theirs. Both sides fail to see the importance of the other side, causing friction and tension among the two groups. Instead of operating as partners, they end up turning against each other. This destroys collaboration, creates a culture with an “us vs. them” mentality, and ultimately reduces overall productivity. The end result is unhappy customers and decreased business revenue and profitability—a lose-lose situation.

Key Elements to Balance Product and Engineering Priorities

Usually, the above problem stems from two separate issues: culture and process.

The cultural issue occurs when the way of thinking among Product and Engineering team members is misaligned. Each has a narrow focus and fails to see the big picture in relation to the company goals. By doing this, they only see part of the problem and vehemently advocate for solving it. In that endeavor, they fail to see the other part of the problem, represented by the other side, and end up optimizing the part while forgetting the whole.

The process issue happens when the two teams do not know how to process all the information and make the right prioritization decisions. In this case, they may or may not have a cultural issue. What is at play here is an inability to make decisions and filter down all the priorities to the most important ones. It is an inability to properly balance the right proportions of product and engineering work.

Therefore, to properly balance product and engineering priorities, a tech company must address both issues and in this order:

1. Cultural Alignment Between Product and Engineering Teams

First, work towards creating a collaborative culture where Product and Engineering teams:

• See themselves as partners and work together collaboratively.
• Are aligned around the same company goals, which are the drivers for all their prioritization decisions.
  
  

2. Process Alignment for Effective Prioritization

Work towards creating a better process for weighing the options and making the best prioritization decisions as partners. It is critical to mention that if Product and Engineering are very skillful at doing this but lack the first ingredient, “Cultural Alignment,” they will still fail.

My personal opinion is that if the teams have “Cultural Alignment” but lack “Process Alignment,” they still have a chance of making good prioritization decisions of product and engineering work. However, if they lack “Cultural Alignment,” it will be difficult to succeed even if “Process Alignment” is present.

1. Cultural Alignment for Product and Engineering Prioritization

The five steps below will help bring cultural alignment to Product and Engineering teams, which is the first ingredient for successful work prioritization.

1. Create a Common Vision

Company goals must be clear. This is why I emphasize the importance of vision and strategy. All decisions must point towards those objectives, which become the standard against which to measure the importance of any work. Arguing whether a product feature should be done in the absence of clear company goals is like arguing whether a driver is speeding in the absence of an established speed limit.

2. Align Team Motivations

Begin any planning session by reminding all participants that they are parts of a larger whole, working towards the same goals (see the previous point). The group needs to partner and work together to make decisions that best align with the company goals. Everyone is there to first serve the company and its customers, and this should be everyone’s primary motivation. Yes, in that process, we end up serving our teams as well, but that is not the primary reason for being employed. It’s not about anyone individually. It is about how the group can work together to create true business value.

3. Facilitate Mutual Understanding

Product should have a sound grasp of the main technical challenges and risks that Engineering has to solve. Product must understand how those challenges and risks can jeopardize the company if unaddressed. Engineering should have a solid understanding of the business goals and the reasons behind them. Engineering must understand how unmet business goals will negatively impact all employees. When this cross-pollination of knowledge occurs regularly, Product and Engineering leaders can unite to make the best prioritization decisions possible.

4. Promote Objectivity

When Product presents arguments for why certain features should be built, it needs to provide as much objective evidence as possible to explain and defend why those features are the most important work. When Engineering presents arguments for why certain non-functional features should be prioritized, it also needs to provide as much objective evidence as possible to justify why that work should be done instead of more product features.

5. Define Decision-Making Authority

Have a clear process for reaching a resolution in the event of an impasse. Here is one proposal:

The Head of Product has the final word. However, if the Head of Engineering cannot support a decision, it is escalated to the CEO for a final decision. NOTE: Being able to support a decision may or may not mean fully agreeing with it. One can support a decision even if they cannot fully agree with it.