As I mentioned in the previous post, I’ve read the book “Inspired. How To Create Tech Products Customers Love” by Marty Cagan.

This book tells about insights related to novice product managers based on Cagan’s decades of working in product management. I personally highly recommend this book for those of you who want to start a career as a product manager.

From a software engineer’s perspective, I capture the relationship between PM and software engineers in their daily work. The book explains what skill sets product managers need to have when working together with a software engineer.

But I also get a different point of view that the book also implicitly explains how we - as engineers, can make our product manager’s life easier.

Here are the things we can do:

  1. Critical in providing feedback. When the product manager gives a problem statement - perhaps through PRD, what they want is that the engineer is able to provide critical feedback on that problem statement.
  2. Communicative. Don’t be a “yes man”. Product manager knows that the engineer is probably the smartest person on his team. Therefore, if we have concerns, ideas, or input, communicate them well. I’ve written about how engineers communicate effectively in this post.
  3. Be confident. If product manager is asking us something, actually the product manager is genuinely asking, not to test us. So answer the question as well as possible without feeling pressured.

I hope our relationship with PM can always be harmonious.

This article is part of the 30 Day Writing Challenge. I’ll challenge myself to write whatever comes to mind.