Strategic Product Improvements for Engineers

### Startups Need Engineers Who Think Like Product Owners ### While working on a large healthcare project with some top tech talents, I noticed something powerful: developers who truly understood the business context consistently delivered the best outcomes. They communicated directly with the product owner, clarified what was essential, and often proposed better alternatives. This led to higher product quality, improved usability, and faster MVP delivery. They didn’t just follow specs — they questioned priorities, deferred non-critical features, and incorporated user feedback into the design process. The result? A better product and significantly improved customer retention. This experience highlights a key insight: In the fast-paced world of SaaS startups, the ability to iterate quickly, deliver meaningful solutions, and make informed decisions is critical. And that requires engineers who think beyond the code. Why? Because while “eat, sleep, code, repeat” may be a developer’s job description on paper, going the extra mile — thinking like a product owner — is what drives real impact. So, how do you transform engineers into strategic partners in building and scaling your product? Here’s how: * Involve engineers early Waiting for the product manager to specify every detail creates bottlenecks. Involve engineers in the discovery phase so they understand the market, target users, and business goals from day one. * Build customer empathy Use customer journey mapping, user stories, and regular feedback loops. Let engineers participate in user interviews — it helps them build products that resonate with real user needs. * Prioritize with business impact Teach engineers to evaluate features through the lens of business value. A value vs. effort matrix is a great tool to focus on what truly matters. * Foster ownership When engineers feel ownership, they go beyond assigned tasks. They suggest innovations, improve processes, and contribute to a culture of continuous improvement. In a startup environment, engineers who think like product owners are essential. They help you move fast, align better across teams, and build products that truly meet market needs. Have you worked with engineers who influenced your product’s success? Or built a team around this mindset? I’d love to hear your thoughts. #ProductDevelopment #EngineeringMindset

🤞 “Next Sprint, we’ll start releasing sooner and more often.” 🤞 “From now on, we’ll improve our collaboration with our stakeholders.” 🤞 “Let’s expand the Definition of Done to improve quality.” These are three examples of common improvements made by Scrum teams. The intention is excellent. There’s only one problem 🚫. They are way too vague, abstract, or comprehensive. Scrum teams often refine their Product Backlog but not their improvements. This is surprising 🤷 because improvements should also be considered “work”—work that’s part of your Product and Sprint Backlog. Refining improvements can be challenging. To help you get started, we share three examples: 1️⃣ “Next Sprint, we’ll start releasing sooner and more often.” More refined improvements would be: 👉 “Involve at least two people from your supporting organization to identify and remove one bottleneck to releasing automation in your team by the end of the next Sprint.” 👉 “Visit a team that has automated something you haven’t yet, and take one idea from them that you will implement next Sprint as well.” 👉 “Pledge to release at least two times this Sprint. Treat this as a constraint to spur creativity. Before you start with an item, think about how to release it individually.” 2️⃣ “From now on, we’ll improve our collaboration with our stakeholders.” More refined improvements would be: 👉 “Work with your Product Owner to schedule at least two stakeholder interviews for the next Sprint. Do the interviews with 1 or 2 members of your team and the Product Owner.” 👉 “Next Sprint, go on a field trip to a location with many product users. You can also split up and visit multiple sites. Report your findings to each other.” 👉 “Create a (virtual) desk in your team space, and invite one of your stakeholders to use it for the upcoming Sprint.” 3️⃣ “Let’s expand the Definition of Done to improve quality.” More refined improvements would be: 👉 “Share your Definition of Done with five stakeholders during your next Sprint. Ask them what specific test or check they think you should add to increase quality.” 👉 “Investigate three critical bugs in recent Sprints, and work together to identify a small step forward to prevent similar bugs. Update your Definition of Done and work agreements as needed.” 👉 “Schedule a 60-minute workshop next Sprint to ensure that your Definition of Done captures what high-quality means to you. Anyone who cares about this can attend.” See the difference? 🤔 Why don't you give it a try during your next Sprint Retrospective? See if you can make your improvements smaller, more tangible, and more specific. And increase the likelihood of actually making them happen!

Guide to Product strategy which was used by Headspace, Meta, and VRChat This guide was created by Chandra Janakiraman (ex CPO at Meta) and helped launch important products like Facebook's digital well-being tools and the VRChat+ subscription. The framework splits strategy into two main parts: Small "s" strategy (2-year horizon) and Big "S" strategy (3/5/10-year horizon). Let's dive into small "s" strategy. → Focuses on solving current product problems → Takes about 8-12 weeks to complete → Requires a cross-functional team: product, engineering, design, data When to use: - You already have a product in the market. - The goal is to systematically find and fix the biggest user/customer/business problems for the next 1-2 years. - You have a well-defined or emerging product-market fit, but you need clearer prioritization and direction. Here are the key steps: 1️⃣ Preparation (3-5 weeks) • Form your strategy working group • Gather user behavior data and research • Interview key leaders in your company: - What does success look like? - What does failure look like? - Key principles or constraints? • Analyze competitors and similar products • Watch real users interact with your product (interviews or recorded sessions) • Outcome: synthesize all the above findings into a single deck 2️⃣ Strategy Sprint (1 week) • Share all findings from preparation phase • List 50-150 problems affecting users or growth • Cluster these into 10-15 broader themes • Score each opportunity area on impact, certainty, clarity of solutions, and uniqueness • Select top 3 opportunity areas as strategic pillars • These pillars represent your major areas of focus (the “where to play” and “how to win” at a high level) Outcome: • 3 strategic pillars • Why you chose them (the scoring table can go into an appendix later). • Winning aspiration • How might we? questions for each pillar to spur solution ideas 3️⃣ Design Sprint (1 week) • Led by the Design function, with PM, Eng, Data as collaborators. • Input: The 3 strategic pillars + “How might we?” questions. • Output: Illustrative concepts / Prototypes 4️⃣ Document Writing (1-2 weeks) • Done by PM(or product lead) solo, with minimal interruptions It Includes (avoid turning this into a roadmap): • context & leadership goals • key insights & analysis (behavioral data, user research, competitor analysis) • winning aspiration • strategic pillars (+ the underlying “why” for each) • full detail on problem-scoring table • additional mocks • any potential next steps 5️⃣ Rollout (2-3 weeks) • Review with key stakeholders one-on-one • Present to all stakeholders as a group • Run team roadshows for broader understanding • Use the strategy to build your product roadmap This clear, structured approach helps teams stay on track, cut through the noise, and focus on what really matters. Your thoughts?

We have zero product managers at Orbital. And product quality has never been higher. So what do we do instead?   Every engineer we've hired in the last three years has taken on PM responsibilities. Here's how we set up our engineers to also own product domains:   1️⃣ Assign clear product areas   Each engineer owns a feature or a product domain—like enrichment or inbound, in our case. That means they’re not just responsible for building it, but for driving the strategy behind it.   2️⃣ Let them advocate for customers   Last week, an engineer challenged me. "We don't have scheduling in our outbound feature. I watched customer calls, and I know it's critical." He wasn't told to do this. He saw the gap because he had deep customer context and authority. Then he brought it to me.   3️⃣ Normalize product thinking   When a demo was failing yesterday, an engineer jumped in and fixed it within 60 seconds. Not because it was her job, but because she owned that piece of the product. (Shoutout to Tulasi)   We expect engineers to operate like domain experts and mini-PMs. That means end-to-end ownership – competitor research, prioritizing fixes vs. features, identifying edge cases before they become bugs, and pushing for UX improvements when something feels off.   4️⃣ Create space for contention   As a founder, don’t assume you have all the answers. We encourage engineers to challenge roadmap decisions if they have better info. And they often do. That pushback leads to better decisions based on data and customer insights.   You don’t need a big team or polished processes to build a great product. You need engineers who think beyond the code – and care deeply about the customer experience.   That’s what keeps quality high, even when you don’t have PM.

Leveraging the Pareto Principle to Optimize Quality Outcomes: 1. Identifying Core Issues: Conduct a thorough analysis of defect trends and recurring quality challenges. Prioritize the 20% of issues that account for 80% of quality failures, focusing efforts on resolving the most impactful problems. 2. Root Cause Analysis: Go beyond mere symptomatic observation and delve deeper into underlying causes using advanced tools such as the "Five Whys" and Fishbone Diagrams. Target the critical few root causes rather than dispersing resources on peripheral issues, ensuring a concentrated approach to problem resolution. 3. Process Optimization: Streamline operational workflows by pinpointing and addressing the most significant process inefficiencies. Apply Lean and Six Sigma methodologies to systematically eliminate waste and optimize processes, ensuring a more effective production cycle. 4. Supplier Performance Management: Identify the 20% of suppliers responsible for the majority of defects and operational disruptions. Enhance supplier oversight through rigorous audits, stricter compliance checks, and fostering closer collaboration to elevate overall product quality. 5. Targeted Training & Development: Tailor training programs to address the most prevalent quality challenges faced by frontline workers and engineers. Ensure that skill development efforts are focused on equipping teams to handle the most critical aspects of quality control, thus driving tangible improvements. 6. Robust Monitoring & Control Mechanisms: Utilize real-time data dashboards to closely monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) that have the highest impact on quality. Implement automated alert systems to detect and address critical deviations promptly, reducing response time and maintaining high standards of quality. 7. Commitment to Continuous Improvement: Cultivate a Kaizen mindset within the organization, where small, incremental improvements, focused on key areas, result in significant long-term gains. Leverage the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle to facilitate ongoing, iterative process enhancements, driving continuous refinement of operations. 8. Integration of Customer Feedback: Systematically analyze customer feedback and complaints to identify recurring issues that significantly affect satisfaction. Prioritize improvements that directly address the most frequent customer concerns, ensuring that product enhancements align with consumer expectations. Maximizing Results through Focused Effort: By concentrating efforts on the critical 20% of factors that drive 80% of outcomes, organizations can significantly improve efficiency, reduce defect rates, and elevate customer satisfaction. This targeted approach allows for the optimal allocation of resources, fostering sustainable improvements across the quality process. Reflection and Engagement: Have you successfully applied the Pareto Principle in your quality management systems?

Product managers at PostHog don’t tell engineers what to build, prioritize for them, or “own the roadmap.” Instead, they’re responsible for helping engineers figure out what to build. A key way they do that is by continuously evaluating what’s working (and what’s not). They do this by running growth reviews: monthly meetings where they go over revenue trends, user feedback, usage metrics, and quarterly goals with the engineers building the product. If the numbers aren’t moving in the right direction, the PM presents a well-researched explanation to the team so that they can come up with an informed hypothesis and solution. As an example from our error tracking team: 1. The problem: Cory, the PM, noticed that churn rates were disproportionately high, even though new customer acquisition was strong. 2. The context: A series of customer interviews all pointed to the same theme: trust. Users were leaving because of rough edges, such as missing recordings or unhandled stack trace edge cases. 3. The hypothesis: This is a product-quality problem, not a “missing features” problem. Systematically improving papercuts, ergonomics, and reliability will reduce churn. 4. The solution: The team catalogued every trust-related issue from customer feedback and shipped dozens of fixes. Churn improved from 21% to 10% in the following quarter. This continuous evaluation create a feedback loop that creates accountability for shipping features that actually have an impact. In this way, engineers can make product decisions without product manager micromanagement as they can see that what they’re building is (or isn’t) working. And engineers don’t necessarily need product managers to do this for them. Every sprint is an opportunity to evaluate whether what you are building is working and create a feedback loop like this. As LLMs make building features easier, skills like this, that help engineers figure out what to build, become even more important. There’s a lot they can learn from product managers in this regard and Jina wrote about it here → https://lnkd.in/dRZGKKiB

Founders who obsess over customer complaints build products competitors can’t copy. QFD (Quality Function Deployment) shows how to do it. Here’s the system : ⭕️ Collect customer needs List what customers want. Group them as primary, secondary, tertiary. Use surveys, support tickets, and real conversations. No assumptions ‼️ ⭕️ Rank importance and performance Customers assign importance weights. Total equals 100. Rate your product against competitors. Same scale Every time ‼️ ⭕️ Convert needs into engineering characteristics Translate needs into measurable variables. Only things engineers can control. This is where talk becomes action ‼️ ⭕️ Map CA–EC relationships Link needs to engineering levers. Mark strong, medium, weak relationships. This shows what actually matters. ⭕️ Set performance targets Record current performance. Benchmark competitors. Define target levels. No vague goals ‼️ ⭕️ Expose trade-offs Identify positive and negative correlations. Improving one thing may hurt another. Choose deliberately ‼️ ⭕️ Lock decisions into the roadmap Prioritize critical levers. Assess effort and cost. Feed directly into product and execution plans. If you can’t trace a feature back to a customer need, you’re guessing. And guesses are easy to copy follow for more such content !

🌍 State of Product 2026 by Atlassian: what product teams should focus on Reading the report, I kept recognizing myself in the numbers: we do have a seat at the strategy table - but we’re often too busy firefighting to actually play the game. Atlassian pulled together recommendations and tools to help teams escape the operational trap and build more intentionally. (examples for each tool are in the visuals attached 👇🏻 ) 📌 Atlassian’s Recommendations: 1️⃣ Do strategy, set goals and KPIs sounds like captain obvious, and everyone wants this. The reality: half of product teams simply don’t have the time ▪️ Tool: VMGS (Vision, Mission, Goals, Strategies) Vision - the future you’re building Mission - the value you deliver to users Goals - measurable targets (conversion, retention) Strategies - initiatives to get there 2️⃣ Outcomes > Outputs it’s not about “shipping 10 features” - it’s about growing conversion from 15% to 25% ▪️ Tools: Idea lifecycle (Wonder → Explore → Make → Impact) Outcome Tree (Business outcome → Product outcome → Opportunities → Solutions) 3️⃣ Build a culture of experimentation experiments = fewer guesses, more data ▪️ Tools: OST (Opportunity Solution Trees) Lighthouse users — 5–10 engaged customers for early access and feedback Access → Rituals → Diffusion (make data accessible → build rituals → spread insights across the org) 4️⃣ Collaboration without borders bring engineers in from day one, build product triads (PM + Designer + Engineer) ▪️ Tools: Role model (Creators, Contributors, Stakeholders) Impact vs Effort Matrix RUF Pyramid (Reliability → Usability → Features) Boulders, Rocks, Pebbles 5️⃣ Invest in Product Ops it’s not bureaucracy - it’s infrastructure for speed and transparency ▪️ Tools: Wonder–Explore–Make–Impact cycle embedded in ops Standardized prioritization methods Feedback river — stream of insights into the backlog Transparent online roadmaps ⚖️ the paradox: product managers love their craft and feel influential. but most of the time, we’re firefighters, not strategists. ❓How about you - do you feel more like a strategist or a firefighter these days?

If your engineers are unable to ship new features because they are busy fixing bugs, struggling to keep from the product degrading, do NOT hire more engineers. You've hit the point where you need to pay off some of the technical debt, especially much-needed automated tests. Stabilize the system first. Speak with the senior engineers to assess the situation, listening to their problems, pinpointing the biggest opportunity for improvement based on business impact, and collaboratively coming up with a plan with conservative time-estimates. In order to PREVENT this from happening again, at least for a long time, whenever possible (which is most of the time), fix the faulty code in a test-driven way, i.e. First, write the failing test that catches the error. Then, update the code that gets the test to pass. This should be a habit ingrained in every engineer.

In my years helping teams enhance product quality, I've seen firsthand how this critical aspect of product engineering can make or break success 🚀 Quality isn't just a checkbox - it's your product's reputation, your team's wellbeing, and your business's future all wrapped into one. Here's why it matters:  • 🚨 Poor quality directly impacts users, increasing churn risk, damaging reputation and killing customer advocacy  • 🔥 Production incidents create significant team disruption and lead to burnout  • 😓 High volumes of unplanned bug fixes demotivate teams and derail sprint commitments  • 💸 The opportunity cost from time lost and context switching can be terminal to product success Quality is a team sport and requires integration at every stage of your software development lifecycle. Here are some of my tried and tested strategies: 𝗕𝗲𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗗𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗹𝗼𝗽𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗕𝗲𝗴𝗶𝗻𝘀 🏁  • 📝 Start with crystal-clear requirements and consistent Definition of Ready/Done criteria  • 🧪 Involve Quality Engineers from day one—implement "three amigos" meetings to refine stories and document test cases early  • 📊 Use Contract Driven Development to agree API specifications before writing code  • ✅ Create robust Definitions of Done covering non-functional requirements, test automation, and documentation 𝗗𝘂𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗗𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗹𝗼𝗽𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 👩💻  • 👯♂️ Embrace pair programming and mob programming sessions (my personal favourite!)  • 📏 Document coding standards and enforce them through static analysis tools  • 📄 Use RFCs and ADRs to transparently document significant technical and architectural decisions  • 🧩 Relentlessly reduce complexity - always consider if decomposition helps engineers reason about the system 𝗗𝗲𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗢𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 🚀  • ⚡ Invest heavily in CI/CD automation for rapid feedback loops  • 🔄 Ship small changes multiple times daily to reduce deployment risk  • 🚦 Leverage feature flags for early, safe delivery and incremental rollouts  • 🧪 Implement ephemeral test environments for pre-merge testing  • 📦 Keep PRs small and use AI for initial review passes  • 🔥 Run realistic performance and load tests to validate non-functional requirements before release  • 🚑 Establish a robust incident management process with structured retrospectives to capture and widely share learnings 𝗠𝗲𝗮𝘀𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗜𝗺𝗽𝗿𝗼𝘃𝗲 📈  • 👁️ Build a robust observability strategy to monitor system health  • 🔍 Reduce signal-to-noise ratio in logs by eliminating low-value errors and warnings  • 🎯 Create SLIs/SLOs that truly capture user experience  • 📊 Instrument and gather actionable insights across the lifecycle - from DORA metrics to build statistics What quality practices have made the biggest difference in your engineering teams? Let me know below! 👇 #ProductQuality #EngineeringExcellence #TechnicalLeadership #SoftwareCraftsmanship