Product and Engineering Collaboration: How to Build Teams That Deliver Better Products

If your developers feel like they’re on the receiving end of your roadmap rather than helping to shape it, you might be slipping into feature factory territory. It’s a common trap (especially in fast-moving organisations ) and it rarely comes from bad intentions. Most of the time it’s a side effect of deadlines, growth pressure, and the sheer volume of work competing for attention.

The problem is, when developers are seen as resources to execute rather than team mates to collaborate with, you lose more than morale. You lose insight, creativity, and the kind of technical partnership that can turn good ideas into great products.

The Problem

In one organisation I worked with, product managers would arrive at sprint planning with a fully fleshed-out set of tickets, complete with acceptance criteria and estimated delivery dates. Developers’ role was to take the ticket, build the thing, and move on to the next one.

On paper, it looked efficient — work was always ready, deadlines were clear, and product could report predictable delivery to stakeholders. But the reality was different. Developers weren’t part of the problem framing, so technical trade-offs were missed, better solutions were overlooked, and the teams became disengaged. The roadmap might have been on track, but the product wasn’t getting better as fast as it could have.

In another case, a product lead I coached genuinely believed involving developers early would “waste time” because they’d “only say no” to ambitious ideas. That belief created a culture of secrecy until the last possible moment, which of course meant every new feature came with hidden complexity and “unexpected” delays.

In both cases, the mindset was the same: developers were seen as resources to execute, not as partners in creating value. And in both cases, that approach slowed the business down in the long run.

Shifting the Mindset

Developers aren’t a separate service department for Product to “call on” when something needs building. They are part of the product function. Their insight, creativity, and technical judgment are as essential to shaping a successful product as customer interviews or market analysis.

The whole team is responsible for delivering value, not just the product manager or the developers. Everyone brings different skills and perspectives, and the best outcomes come when those perspectives are blended. The term Product Owner is often misunderstood — it means owning the product vision and prioritisation, not owning every decision or dictating the “how” in isolation. If the PO is making all the calls without input from the rest of the team, the product will suffer.

As Marty Cagan writes in Inspired:

“The best product teams don’t hand off requirements to engineering — they solve problems together.”

When developers are involved early, in discovery sessions, customer research, and problem framing, the quality of ideas improves. They can spot feasibility issues before they become blockers, suggest alternative approaches that save months of work, and bring forward technical opportunities the product team may not have considered.

This isn’t about asking engineers to “think like product people”. It’s about recognising that they already are product people. They understand the constraints, they care about the customer experience, and they want to see the product succeed. By treating them as part of the same team, you create shared ownership of the outcomes, not just the outputs.

Practical Ways to Bridge the Gap

1. Involve developers in discovery
Principle: Product decisions are stronger when informed by both customer insight and technical context.
Example: Invite at least one or two engineers to every customer interview, and give them the space to ask their own questions. You’ll often find they spot patterns or opportunities you might miss. As Teresa Torres says in Continuous Discovery Habits:

“If you’re not engaging the whole team in discovery, you’re only leveraging part of your team’s potential.”

2. Share the “why” before the “what”
Principle: Developers make better decisions when they understand the problem you’re trying to solve, not just the feature you want delivered.
Example: In backlog refinement, start with the customer problem and success metrics before showing any proposed solution.

3. Give engineers a voice in prioritisation
Principle: Technical considerations are part of product strategy, not a separate stream of “tech debt”.
Example: When deciding what to tackle next, include engineering-led initiatives in the same prioritisation discussions as feature work. This echoes the thinking in Team Topologies by Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais, where they stress balancing delivery of features with work that sustains long-term flow.

4. Close the loop with customer feedback
Principle: Seeing the impact of their work keeps developers connected to the product vision.
Example: Share product analytics and user feedback in squad reviews, so engineers know exactly how their last release performed in the real world.

5. Encourage dev-led product improvements
Principle: Some of the best ideas for customer value come from the people building the product.
Example: Run quarterly “hackathons” where developers propose and prototype small changes that could have a big impact.

Signs You’re Getting it Right

When product and engineering start to truly see each other as team mates, you notice the shift in both day-to-day behaviour and tangible outcomes.

Team behaviours:

In planning sessions, developers ask questions about customer needs rather than only about scope and deadlines.
Product managers openly invite engineers to challenge assumptions and propose alternatives.
There’s less “hand-off” language (“I’ll give this to dev”) and more collective language (“we’re working on…”).
Engineers join product-led workshops or customer calls without it feeling unusual or needing special approval.

Outcomes:

Features are released faster because technical constraints and opportunities are considered from the start, avoiding rework.
The product backlog contains a healthy mix of customer-driven and engineering-led items, showing a shared sense of ownership.
User satisfaction improves because solutions are better informed by both customer and technical insight.
Team morale is higher, with lower attrition, because engineers feel their work is valued beyond just “getting it done”.

Bringing It All Together

Bridging the gap between product and engineering isn’t about changing job titles or merging departments. It’s about building the habit of treating developers as team mates who share ownership of the product’s success.

As Forsgren, Humble, and Kim remind us in Accelerate:

“Software delivery performance is a whole-team responsibility — product and engineering succeed or fail together.”

Here’s my challenge to you: in your next planning session, ask yourself whether your developers are helping to shape the roadmap, or just executing it. If it’s the latter, you have an opportunity to unlock more value — for your customers, your team, and your business.

A practical first step? Pick one upcoming piece of discovery work and invite an engineer to join you. Share the customer context, ask for their ideas, and give them equal footing in the conversation. You might be surprised how much better the solution becomes.

When product and development work as one team, the results speak for themselves — faster delivery, better solutions, and a stronger, more engaged group of people building them.