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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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