“It’s the product manager’s job to write Jira tickets.”
“I need to get full requirements before starting the implementation.”
What’s missing here?
It’s the partnership between engineering and product—a lack of product mindset and learning culture.
Engineers often don’t feel responsible for the product they are building. They focus on making the codebase healthy, using the new technology, or bringing a well-defined Jira ticket from “To Do” to “Done.”
They can’t see the forest for the trees, not because they are stupid, but because there is no incentive for them to look at the forest. They think it’s the product manager’s job to see the forest for them.
How do we change this situation?
The organization needs to set expectations and incentives correctly, take time to train engineers on product mindset and increase the level of transparency at every level.
Instead of putting all responsibility on one person to “manage” the product, the organization must invest in building a product mindset and learning muscles in engineers. Expecting engineers to learn by themselves can’t go beyond wishful thinking. As Kevin Scott once said, “Engineers’ job is not to ship code. It’s to help the company win.”
The organization has to increase transparency to help engineers understand the why, the context, and the background of what they are building. If the information is unavailable, they have no place to learn from. How can they help the company win without knowing why the company needs to win?
Then, the organization needs to “force” engineers to get to know the users they are building the product for. Having workshops, taking the time in each project to walkthrough user journeys, and showing the complete picture (forest) guides engineers in their learning journey.
After that, engineers can (and should) refine the ambiguous tasks themselves and even create new tasks with ideas.
You might say, “Who will do all of these?” and that person, in my opinion, is the Product Manager. They have to understand the users, create a vision for the product, and elevate everyone to know the product and its users.
Give an engineer a fully defined Jira ticket; you get your job done in a day. Teach an engineer how to understand the user, extract requirements, and write a Jira ticket; they get the job done without you for a lifetime.
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