engineering & product development synchronicity

Why You Need Engineering & Product Development Synchronicity

In Strategy Resources by Brandt A. HandleyLeave a Comment

With growth often comes growing pains in many facets of business. Product development, refinement, and engineering are certainly not exempt. Depending on your Middle Market firm’s progression you’ll see different areas out of sync. You may be starting to see a distinct disconnect between your engineering and product development groups. In order to ensure you can continue to grow, you likely need to help develop more synchronicity between the teams.

What Causes Issues

Like any two groups who have goals that sort of parallel each other but which also intersect at different times, your development and engineering teams may feel they are more “against” each other than “working together”.  Also, they may feel they have entirely different goals and desired outcomes. Therefore, perhaps they aren’t necessarily interested in helping each other out. Additionally, your corporate structure and rewards systems may be causing discord or a disconnect.

How To Focus On Aligning The Groups

Any process of bringing internal groups together can be bumpy. Your Middle Market company will need to realize this won’t necessarily be easy. Because you’re dealing with human beings and not widgets, you also have to cope with their emotions. Start by discussing the issues with your leadership teams for both groups. Then, begin to introduce the teams to these conversations. Depending on your unique environment, you may find different scenarios work best. It might work to immediately bring both groups together for talks. Or to maintain separate, parallel processes in place. The main goal of these conversations is to find out where each sees a breakdown. You want to gain their input and acceptance into the process.

Make sure both teams understand the significance of the changes and that you need and value their input and suggestions. Keeping the meetings more informal and pushing collaboration over pointing out flaws will likely go further in getting both groups on board.

Leadership And Team Crossovers

In most organizations that have great synchronicity between product development and engineering, there are usually at least a few points of crossover. It may be a more collaborative leadership group, or it may be a single C-suite person in charge of both groups. Some companies find it helpful to swap out leaders, managers and key personnel on a regular basis or at least “lend” these human resources to each area as needed.

Ideally, the more collaborative and team-centric these teams are, the more likely employees are to help each other out and to work towards a more common goal. Instead of feeling like one group is more future facing and the other is more concerned with now, the groups will likely be able to focus together on short, middle and long-term goals.

A Clear Path & Goals

Lastly, make sure that everyone on both teams truly knows and understands your roadmap for the future. By making sure everyone is on the same page and understands the ultimate goals, they’ll have an easier time working collaboratively towards them. Also, when you set goals and rewards systems up (or shift them) start thinking about how you can reward both teams for the same goal.

Instead of rewarding just the product development team for hitting a release date goal, make it vital to both and vice versa. Again, the more you can keep both teams working towards the same goals and heading in the same directions, the more you’ll find them naturally being motivated to work together.

Your engineering and product development teams both play a strong part in your future success. By creating and maintaining more synchronicity between the teams, your Middle Market organization can find great rewards.

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