Coaching – Collaboration

Marty Cagan argues that real collaboration in an empowered product team is very different from how many product managers assume they work. It is not consensus, democracy, artifact-producing requirement handoffs, or compromise. Instead, product, design, and engineering should jointly explore solutions around a shared prototype, each deferring to the expertise of the others, until they find something valuable, usable, feasible, and viable. The same collaborative stance applies to stakeholders, executives, and prospective customers. Cagan notes that this depends on the product manager having done her homework on business constraints, and that arrogance or ignorance are the usual failure modes.

01Key takeaways

• Treat collaboration as joint problem-solving, not consensus voting or handing off requirements.
• Use prototypes and story maps as working tools that drive team conversation, not just as documents.
• Defer to each discipline's expertise on architecture, user experience, and similar domain questions, and settle real disagreements with tests.
• Do your homework on sales, finance, legal, and privacy constraints so you can be an effective partner rather than a facilitator.
• Listen for the underlying problem behind stakeholder or customer feature requests, then search for a solution that fits all constraints.
• Watch for arrogance: holding a predetermined answer stifles collaboration and erodes team commitment.

02Key sections

What collaboration is not

Cagan rules out consensus, democracy, artifact-driven requirement handoffs, and compromise as definitions of collaboration. Each one either dilutes expertise or ends the conversation too early.

Collaborating around prototypes

Teams do their best collaboration sitting around a prototype, with designers, engineers, and product managers each contributing their expertise. Prototypes and story maps both foster collaboration and leave a useful record of decisions.

Expertise beyond the lane

Designers and engineers should not be confined to usability and feasibility respectively. Their deep insights often change the problem framing and produce better solutions than anyone expected.

Where collaboration goes wrong

Collaboration fails when the product manager lacks business knowledge, or when she arrives with a predetermined answer and arrogance shuts down input. The result is a team of mercenaries instead of missionaries.

Collaborating with stakeholders and customers

The same principle applies to legal, finance, and other stakeholders, to executives, and to prospects in sales-driven companies. The product manager listens for underlying constraints and works toward solutions rather than gathering requirements or dictating features.

03From the post

“A partnership dedicated to teaching best practices to product teams and product leaders”

04Frameworks mentioned

Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.