Dev manager at Jungle Disk. I love fixing things, whether I’m refactoring or digging into bugs, I just find it satisfying to make things better than they were before.
As a former PM that ended up being a dev, I can’t help but feel that this is the wrong approach. As you mention, and as I experienced, PMs often have to blindly trust devs. I don’t believe this to be a fault of PMs and only PMs. Certainly, there will be barriers when scoping a project when a PM knows little to nothing about the dev stack, but i don’t think that necessarily warrants multiple hours of a “dev crash course” to correct.
If I could go back to my first months as a PM, I’d have benefited greatly from a crash course on the tech stack that was underlying my product AND hearing from devs what the biggest barriers were therein. Further, I think those devs would greatly benefit from understanding AND participating in my approach to prioritizing and focus on customer requests.
All in all, it’s a team effort (cliche, I know) that requires a shared understanding of goals and obstacles. Compromise is non-negotiable and cannot happen until some semblance of a shared understanding develops.
Let me know if you have questions, I’d be happy to further elaborate on my experience and share whatever I can. It’s great that you’re asking these questions and want to bring the disciplines together. It’s a tough road.
As a former PM that ended up being a dev, I can’t help but feel that this is the wrong approach. As you mention, and as I experienced, PMs often have to blindly trust devs. I don’t believe this to be a fault of PMs and only PMs. Certainly, there will be barriers when scoping a project when a PM knows little to nothing about the dev stack, but i don’t think that necessarily warrants multiple hours of a “dev crash course” to correct.
If I could go back to my first months as a PM, I’d have benefited greatly from a crash course on the tech stack that was underlying my product AND hearing from devs what the biggest barriers were therein. Further, I think those devs would greatly benefit from understanding AND participating in my approach to prioritizing and focus on customer requests.
All in all, it’s a team effort (cliche, I know) that requires a shared understanding of goals and obstacles. Compromise is non-negotiable and cannot happen until some semblance of a shared understanding develops.
Let me know if you have questions, I’d be happy to further elaborate on my experience and share whatever I can. It’s great that you’re asking these questions and want to bring the disciplines together. It’s a tough road.
Very interesting feedback, thank you.
You did end up learning development though, right? How so?