Communication in cross-functional teams

Working in cross functional teams is the occupational hazard for product managers.

A typical product manager needs to work with 3 kinds of teams:

Engineering team - comprising of developers, testers and IT operations
Sales / Marketing team
Management team

The product manager needs to have different set of information - or rather information represented and expressed in different ways for the three different teams.

Engineering Team Focus:

Focus on what needs to be done.
Define clear milestones
Clearly communicate focus of the product and end user gain
Help take decisions to architect the product
Detail the product road-map from the engineering side

Sales/Marketing Team Focus:

Focus on what the product positioning needs to be
Map the competitive landscape and find out how we are different from our competitors
Clearly communicate the overall marketing / sales goals - with respect to details like channels, goal for the period
Detail out the communication plan with the end users and involve in every engineering milestone

Management Team Focus:

Focus on what the product brings on the table to the organization
Clearly communicate what is the product road-map is and what help we need from the organization
Layout the risks / opportunities along with the financials
Ask for help in getting help from other functions
Get a champion from the management team for internal / external positioning.

While this is not exhaustive, It is a sanity list for a product manager - things that we should never miss.

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