Building your Product Roadmaps with Engineering

In most organizations, Product Managers are typically the driving force behind the strategic vision and roadmap of a product. Their focus is on delivering customer-centric features that maximize value for users and propel business growth. However, a successful product relies on more than just feature development; DevOps practices and the management of technical debt are essential components that ensure a stable, scalable, and maintainable product. This brings up a crucial question: should Product Managers be actively involved in DevOps and technical debt planning?

The answer is not always clear-cut. Involving product in these discussions has significant benefits, including enhanced strategic alignment and prioritization, yet it also presents challenges like conflicting priorities and potential scope creep. This article explores both the advantages and disadvantages of including Product Managers in DevOps and technical debt discussions, helping organizations determine the best approach for their unique needs.

Pros of Involving Product in DevOps and Technical Debt Planning

1. Strategic Alignment Across Teams

Bringing Product Managers into DevOps and technical debt conversations fosters stronger alignment between product, engineering, and business goals. Product Managers understand the product’s vision, customer needs, and market requirements, which can be valuable when deciding which technical projects to prioritize. For example, if the product is entering new markets where uptime and reliability are critical differentiators, Product Managers can advocate for investments in infrastructure or redundancy.

Additionally, when Product Managers participate in these discussions, they can see first-hand the technical challenges engineers face, which helps them set more realistic expectations for feature delivery. This mutual understanding leads to a more cohesive product roadmap that balances user-centric features with technical resilience.

Benefit: Aligning technical and product objectives ensures that both user-facing and backend improvements support the product’s long-term strategy, leading to a roadmap that considers both business value and technical excellence.

2. Informed Prioritization of Technical Debt

Technical debt is a reality in any product lifecycle, and when it’s left unmanaged, it can lead to degraded performance, security vulnerabilities, and scaling issues that ultimately impact the user experience. Product Managers bring a customer-focused lens to technical debt discussions, allowing teams to identify and prioritize the technical debt that has the most significant effect on the end-user. For example, if lag times or frequent crashes frustrate users, product can advocate for backend optimizations that improve stability.

This user-centric prioritization ensures that the most impactful technical debt is addressed in a timely manner, preventing future issues that could affect user retention or satisfaction.

Benefit: Product involvement in technical debt prioritization helps address high-impact issues that improve user experience, ensuring a balanced and customer-focused approach to technical improvements.

3. Improved Resource Allocation

Resource allocation can be challenging when balancing feature development with technical needs. With product included in technical discussions, Product Managers can provide a preview of upcoming initiatives or feature sets that may require specific technical resources. For instance, a new feature that involves real-time data processing might require infrastructure enhancements, additional server capacity, or new DevOps tooling.

By coordinating these requirements early, Product Managers help DevOps and engineering teams allocate resources more effectively. This reduces the likelihood of unexpected bottlenecks and supports smoother development cycles.

Benefit: Product Managers’ input on future feature requirements enables more proactive resource planning in engineering and DevOps, allowing technical teams to prepare for new demands in advance.

4. Enhanced Cross-Functional Communication

Involving product in DevOps and technical debt discussions can improve communication across teams, fostering transparency and building a shared understanding of technical and product challenges. Product Managers can share insights into customer pain points or stakeholder feedback, giving DevOps and engineering teams a better understanding of the real-world impact of their work.

For example, if customers report frustrations with loading times, product can convey this feedback directly, helping engineers understand the importance of optimizing performance from a user perspective. This type of cross-functional communication reinforces a culture of shared responsibility and helps ensure that technical and product teams are working toward a common goal.

Benefit: Improved cross-functional communication builds a collaborative environment, where teams are aligned on goals and better equipped to respond to changing user needs or technical challenges.

Cons of Involving Product in DevOps and Technical Debt Planning

1. Risk of Diverting Focus from Core Product Responsibilities

Product Managers are often responsible for a range of activities, including user research, feature prioritization, go-to-market planning, and competitive analysis. Adding DevOps and technical debt planning to their responsibilities can dilute their focus, potentially reducing the time and energy they can dedicate to their core product tasks. For example, a Product Manager who spends excessive time on technical debt discussions might miss critical updates on customer needs or market trends.

Drawback: When Product Managers take on technical responsibilities, they risk spreading themselves too thin, impacting their ability to execute on essential product-focused tasks and slowing down feature delivery.

2. Potential Conflicts in Prioritization

Engineering and product teams may have differing viewpoints on prioritization. Product Managers typically focus on features that improve user experience and generate revenue, while engineering teams prioritize stability, scalability, and technical cleanliness. These different goals can lead to tension in prioritization discussions. For instance, while product may push for a new feature to meet a competitive deadline, engineering might advocate for backend refactoring to address technical debt.

Without clear guidelines for resolving these conflicts, the organization may face delays or resource struggles, as teams pull in different directions.

Drawback: Conflicting priorities between product and engineering can delay decision-making and create friction, potentially impacting both feature development and technical improvements.

3. Risk of Scope Creep

Involving Product Managers in technical discussions can lead to scope creep, where they advocate for additional enhancements or changes that weren’t part of the original technical plan. For example, a Product Manager might suggest adding user-facing functionality during a backend refactoring project, which could complicate the project’s scope and timeline.

Scope creep is particularly challenging for engineering and DevOps, as it can stretch timelines, increase workloads, and lead to resource constraints that may affect other high-priority initiatives.

Drawback: Product involvement may introduce additional requirements or scope changes, complicating technical projects and potentially stretching timelines or resources beyond capacity.

4. Reduced Flexibility for Engineering and DevOps

Engineering and DevOps teams often benefit from flexibility when addressing technical debt and operational issues. Their agile workflows allow them to respond quickly to emerging technical challenges or operational needs. When Product Managers are involved, their expectations for structured roadmaps and timelines can reduce this flexibility, as technical teams may feel obligated to stick closely to the plan.

Drawback: Increased structure and oversight may reduce agility for engineering and DevOps, limiting their ability to address urgent technical issues or explore innovative solutions.

Striking a Balance: Best Practices for Involving Product in Technical Planning

1. Define Clear Roles and Responsibilities

Clarify the role of product in DevOps and technical debt discussions to ensure each team understands their responsibilities and limitations. For example, product can provide input on the business impact of technical debt but should leave technical implementation details to engineering.

Actionable Tip: Define boundaries and set expectations early to prevent conflicts and allow each team to work within their areas of expertise.

2. Establish Regular Technical Debt Reviews

Schedule regular review sessions where product, engineering, and DevOps teams can assess and prioritize technical debt. This helps ensure that high-priority technical debt items are addressed without derailing feature development.

Actionable Tip: Create a review schedule to keep all teams aligned on technical debt priorities, ensuring the most impactful issues are addressed promptly.

3. Adopt a Prioritization Framework

Using prioritization frameworks like RICE (Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort) or WSJF (Weighted Shortest Job First) can help teams objectively assess which tasks should come first, balancing feature development with technical needs.

Actionable Tip: Apply a shared prioritization framework to enable fair and balanced decision-making across product, engineering, and DevOps.

4. Communicate Impact Rather Than Specifics

Encourage Product Managers to communicate the potential impact of technical debt on user experience or business goals, rather than suggesting specific technical solutions.

Actionable Tip: Focus on outcome-based communication, letting engineering and DevOps teams devise their own solutions.

5. Align on Shared Metrics

Define success metrics that resonate with both product and technical teams, such as uptime, performance benchmarks, or defect rates, to create alignment on shared goals.

Actionable Tip: Use shared metrics to measure progress, keeping both product and technical goals in sight.

Clear Benefits of Planning

Involving Product Managers in DevOps and technical debt planning has clear benefits, such as strategic alignment, informed prioritization, and improved communication. However, it also presents risks, including potential conflicts, scope creep, and diverted focus from core product functions.

Striking a balance is key: with defined roles, regular reviews, and a shared prioritization framework, organizations can enjoy the benefits of product involvement without sacrificing agility or focus. By aligning on shared metrics and fostering outcome-based communication, Product Managers and technical teams can collaboratively drive both immediate product value and long-term stability.

In the end, an approach that values both user-focused development and technical resilience will create a sustainable roadmap, ensuring that the product meets both business goals and technical excellence over time.