Situation + Feeling

Inputs & chaos

• delivery: “You haven’t delivered on your roadmap for the 3Q”
• tech debt: “Refactoring”
• support + bugs: “”
• leadership: hiring, onboarding, education,
• improvement: retros
• feeling: failed, betrayed, 3Q not delivered but busy

Agenda

• Marian 15 mins: Intro to Daily team priorities: https://app.getguru.com/card/iMkxzdqT/Team-lead-daily-priorities. Invest long-term.

• TOP 3 scenarios with @Pavel Šafařík : negative and the right action:
1. urgently pressing request from the Sales: it’s been sold. “Sorry ale byl sa mnou, pomohl jsem…”
1. alignment: common team goals + capacity
2. PM: low value but sexy
3. New Q: tech debt + prod roadmap: prepare your ammunition
• Summary: system + synergies + tips: create synergies 300%
• Invite for the next meetup
• Pages

TODO

Pavel: 3 scenarions deep dive: 6+6 paragraphs

Marian: dry run

Both: LI announcement

“Bonjour, today we’re gonna experiment with a bit different format. Recent meetups had something in common that we didn’t always have answers for. You’re coming to me that “it would be great to incorporate some product angle” or “apart of technology, we have problems with our product people, we don’t understand each other much” or “we want to improve these team synergies”.

So here we go, we have a product guy here today, and we wanted to find out whether talking about the engineering ↔ product problems, cooperation, and synergies might be something you’ll like.

We expect you to come up with questions, topics, and problems so that we can leverage our evening efficiently.”

Motivation

1. Engineers would prioritise different things than PMs
2. Engineers and PMs don't understand each other (KPIs, Priorities)
3. Higher-ups or sales reps. force teams to build something custom for “one” company

Desired outcome

1. Engineers (the main attendees) know how and why to consider business drivers when prioritising
2. Engineers know how why and to what extent to keep customers in mind when building and prioritising
3. Engineers know why and how to say “no” to incoming requests

Tools to get there

1. tips and tricks
2. better systems/frameworks
3. create synergies 300% (i.e. understanding how others think and what they prioritise gives me the ability to (a) adapt and (b) explain my concerns better and achieve alignment) - talking the same language.

The how: Scenarios: top 3-5 situations

1. Marian 15-20 mins: Intro to Daily team priorities: https://app.getguru.com/card/iMkxzdqT/Team-lead-daily-priorities. Invest long-term.
2. 3x 10-15 mins: Scenarios: discussion with recalling the real experience (i.e. “this happened to me…”) and waiting for audience questions.
1. Sales-led development Situation: urgently pressing request from the Sales: it’s been sold. “Sorry ale byl sa mnou, pomohl jsem…”
1. Role of Engineer: challenge too vague/quick decisions.
1. THOUGHT THROUGH: 1 veta:Dik rozumim, kazdopadne co to ma delat?
2. WHY: Kde je v tom hodnota?
3. ALIGN: Je to to align s nasima cilema?
4. TO PULL: Proc si myslis, ze je to lepsi nez to, na cem ted delame?
5. ACTION: we’ll discuss it with the PM together.
2. Not always bad to build something custom!
3. What is our strategy (win enterprises vs wide coverage)
4. What is the leverage:
1. building for one client helps us win them = we can’t build something for more companies
2. “it will help us close other companies” - OK, so let’s plan it this way, not just hope (e.g. research how many others deal with similar problem)
5. LL: excuses won't help
2. PM - low value but sexy Situation:
3. New Q: tech debt + prod roadmap: prepare your ammunition Situation: “We have increasing tech debt, but I kept hearing it’s not the priority, we can’t lock ourselves for months and not deliver any features, but I see how the development is more risky, buggy, slower, and it will be nearly impossible to build anything in a year or two”
1. Role of Engineer: being the domain expert and demonstrating knowledge of the tech issues and explaining to others to mitigate risk.
2. It’s not a fight, unless it sometimes looks like that, you’re the expert, PM just doesn’t feel as you mean it. Prepare business impact (talking the same language, creating synergies)
3. Summary: system + synergies + tips

1. Art of saying NO

Situace: Prijde sales rep a tlaci ma pilu, je mozna i nadrazeny:-)

Do publika: co si myslite, ze je lepsi reakce?

2. Product vs technical balance

Situace: Planning meeting: 4ty sprint neni cas na technicke veci a valime jen produktove featury.

Summary:

• Pavel: EM presvedit PMa ze je to i jeho problem pres hodnotu v businessu.
• Marian: neprodavat refaktoring

Pavel: summary

TODO

• Marian: Slido
• Pavel: Co já dělám, aby product a engineering lépe spolupracoval (5m)
• we all have to have the same direction (goals, KPIs, motivation, etc.)
• antipattern: different KPIs, vision, goals
• we have to be super honest about (a) what we agree with, (b) don’t agree with, (c) talking often, (d) NVC
• antipattern: blaming, silence because a lot of meetigns, dishonesty, etc.
• expand your role understanding
• antipattern: PM doesn’t want to understand why this part of code needs refactoring