While we are members of all product teams, we are not always part of the core day-to-day meetings and plannings. Keeping up with our products' needs, roadmaps, and coordinating the availability of our team for product work can be challenging at times. It’s one of the tradeoffs we make as part of remaining an independent team. Project Management is one of our strongest partners in this area, and they often have the insight into priority and timing of upcoming work.
Issues understanding the needs of our products
- When we lack context on how our products are used, it is difficult to connect our work to the needs of the product.
- As an independent team, we can switch between products and many efforts can pass before we are reassigned to a specific product.
Best practices for gaining insight into products' needs
- Use resources generated by Project Managers like Project Charters to get up to speed on current needs of a product.
- Read through documentation and spin up the product's repo to gain firsthand experience with it.
- Share your progress and the need you are fulfilling with the rest of the FE Team during twice-weekly meetings.
How we can be more aware of the needs of our products
- Request to sit in on demos for products that we are less familiar with to gain context.
- Have a team member claim 'ownership' of a product who stays up-to-date on the product's needs even when FE efforts are not in progress and shares this knowledge as needed.