Digital Trailblazer

Chapter 4Product Management and Architecture: Trials and Triumphs

It's fair to say that I've worked with some challenging product owners.

Or, more precisely, I'll just say that some product managers can be unrealistic, and some, dare I say, can just be unreasonable, pompous, arrogant, and self‐serving.

And then some are true collaborative geniuses. These maestros win over stakeholders to buy into visions and customer value propositions without getting sucked into appeasing everyone's wish lists. And they know enough about the architecture, technology, and data to ask agile teams smart questions without getting under their skin.

But the reality is, unfortunately, that some product leaders lack a sufficient understanding of how technologies work, what processes make development teams successful, or even the simplest things like treating developers nicely.

The requests they make in their requirements are often outlandish. The timelines are insane. The expectations are that everything should just work like their favorite websites developed by unicorn consumer startups. The belief is that developers must replicate a web designer's work of art with pixel‐perfect precision. Like it's Picasso's design even though it's gone through dozens of stakeholders and hundreds of revisions that convert a work of art into a messy, confusing canvas.

Seriously, it's really easy to get developers on your side. Compliment a developer and show interest in what they are working on, and they're yours ...