My 2p-worth on this topic, as an experienced EM. 1. Agree what jobs need to be done as a team, and who’s doing them. Think RACI matrix. If you disagree over r

My 2p-worth on this topic, as an experienced EM. 1. Agree what jobs need to be done as a team, and who’s doing them. Think RACI matrix. If you disagree over roles, consider breaking down the responsibility into smaller parts until you can agree. 2. Engineers should understand the strategy. How are you acquiring and retaining customers, and what are the biggest issues there? How are you spending money? What are the risks? 3. PMs need to think about NFRs. Instead of the common “tech debt vs features”, break work into customer-facing and internal-facing. If a feature is about decreasing latency by 200ms, for example, that’s customer facing. 4. Engineers and PMs need to empathise with each other. PMs typically lack control, but are at the coal-face receiving demands and complaints from everyone but unable to directly do anything about it. Engineers have to deal with huge complexity in areas they often know little about. Understand each other’s problems. 5. Have more effective meetings. Use them for answering difficult questions that need debate. For imparting huge amounts of info in one direction, record videos or write documents. 6. Be honest and transparent. Challenge each other where there is ambiguity until you are all ready to fully commit and prepared to be held accountable for delivering the same goal. 7. Build a decision-making framework that you both follow. This can be particularly effective with work intake. 8. Keep the focus on moving KPIs, not delivering features. Align around a few product and engineering metrics and concentrate on them relentlessly. Regularly review the case for all in-flight work.