Harmony in Innovation: Building Stronger Engineer-Product Relationships

Navigating the intricate relationship between product teams and engineers is crucial for the success of any project, especially in agile workflows where roles and responsibilities frequently intersect. This session, tailored for engineers, technical leads, and product managers, dives deep into the challenges and opportunities that arise from this partnership, shedding light on practices that promote shared ownership, satisfaction, and effective communication.

We will delve into the unique role that engineers play in fostering a productive relationship with product teams. Our discussion will cover strategies for facilitating open and constructive dialogue, empowering engineers to contribute their technical expertise to product discussions, and creating an environment where innovative thinking is valued and encouraged.

Specifically, attendees can expect to walk away with:

- Key Strategies for Enhanced Communication: Practical guidelines and examples from collaborative roadmapping and dual-track agile, aimed at strengthening the dialogue between product and engineering, ensuring technical insights are effectively communicated.
- Practices for Shared Ownership: Approaches, including effective backlog refinement techniques, to cultivate a sense of pride and accountability among engineers for the products they contribute to.
- A Product-Engineering Maturity Model: A straightforward roadmap to guide continuous improvement in collaboration, helping teams assess their current state and identify areas for growth, with examples from real-world applications.

The aim is to create a more harmonious and productive working environment, where engineers contribute not just code, but strategic value to their projects.

Quick Wins: Accelerate Product Innovation in 30 days

Caught in the relentless rhythm of product maintenance? Learn to foster innovation without breaking stride. This talk is your guide to generating and testing new ideas to show value in 30 days or less, rooted in proven consulting methodologies, workshops and frameworks you can implement tomorrow.

Running the Engine vs. Innovation -- you don't have to choose. Learn practical exercises and frameworks you can implement around daily demands of running a mature product, or inciting new innovation to show value and gain stakeholder advocacy quickly -- particularly in the

Audience Takeaways:
- A practical 30-day blueprint for infusing innovation into a mature product environment.
- Actionable strategies for daily ideation, rapid validation, and quick wins in product differentiation.
- Insights into maintaining a healthy balance between running the product engine and pursuing innovation.
- Links to Miro templates, frameworks, canvases to start right away.

Running the Engine vs. Innovation -- you don't have to choose. Learn practical exercises and frameworks you can implement around daily demands of running a mature product. Discover how to create a harmonious synergy that drives sustained growth. Our Practice Leads will highlight proven consulting exercises and how you can implement them to show value and gain stakeholder advocacy quickly:

1. Strategic Assessments for Differentiation: Learn how to strategically assess your maturing product, identifying untapped areas for differentiation. This step sets the groundwork for injecting innovation without disrupting daily operations.

2. Daily Workshops for Continuous Ideation: Explore the concept of daily workshops as a means of fostering continuous ideation. Discover how to create a culture that values and integrates small, innovative ideas into the daily workflow.

3. Hot Houses for Intensive Innovation: Dive into the concept of "Hot Houses" adapted for mature products. Understand how to create focused, intensive sessions that drive innovation and quickly yield new features or enhancements.

4. Design Sprints for Rapid Validation: Utilize design sprints for swift validation of new features and ideas. Learn how this approach can expedite decision-making and ensure that innovations align with market needs.

5. POCs and MVPs for Quick Wins: Explore the concept of 30-day Proof-of-Concept (POC) or Minimum Viable Product (MVP), and the difference between them, as a strategy for achieving quick wins & internal buy-in.

Evolving Agile for a Data-Driven Today

As we enter the era of AI and data-driven decision-making, the traditional agile product model faces growing scrutiny, particularly in its ability to demonstrate accountability. In this new landscape, many product teams are missing a critical component: data at the core of their processes. This presentation challenges the current dual-track product discovery and delivery model, proposing a reimagined framework where data becomes a central element of both product and platform teams.

By embedding data analysts into product teams, alongside product managers, designers, and engineers, organizations can enhance decision-making and strengthen their approach to risk management. In this new model, data analysts play a crucial role in tackling the four key product risks—usability, feasibility, desirability, and viability—by co-owning feasibility with engineering and viability with product management. This integration of data into the product lifecycle ensures that data-driven insights inform every step of the process, improving both accountability and business outcomes.

Beyond reshaping product teams, this presentation explores how treating data as a product creates alignment across cross-functional teams and fosters collaboration between product and platform teams. We will also examine the technical and operational implications of this shift, including how organizations can adopt data-as-a-product principles within modern frameworks like data mesh and data fabric. These frameworks, which decentralize data ownership and governance, help operationalize this new approach, empowering teams to leverage data effectively at scale.

By the end of the session, attendees will understand how rethinking the role of data in product teams not only addresses agile's accountability challenges but also positions organizations for success in an AI-driven future. Practical strategies and real-world case studies will be provided to help attendees implement these concepts in their own organizations.

This full presentation is designed offered in 45m, but key concepts can also be discussed in a truncated 15-minute Lightning Talk.

This is suggested an Intermediate level, because some moderate understanding of the traditional agile and dual-track product operating model will be beneficial to attendees. Beginners should be able to follow along with key concepts.

Dialing in Team Health for increased through-put

Do you track Team Health? Team engagement & overall health are critical factors correlating to productivity.

Let's examine 25 ways a Product Owner or Team Lead can influence higher team performance by exploring the people, process & tools that impact delivery, and how you can influence it.

This will provide attendees with a checklist of real action items they can reflect on and start to implement right away whether in-person or distributed, to better shape team engagement and subsequently affect delivery.

This is targeted to Beginner and Intermediate level Product Leads, Tech Leads and Scrum Masters, with a moderate level of experience on Product or Platform teams. Other team members, such as analysts or engineers, will be able to follow along and find the majority of recommendations actionable.