Why is it important to foster collaboration between product & engineering teams? In this episode of Product Talk hosted by Kaboo Founder Neha Shah, Splunk Senior Software Engineer Rehan Mulla speaks on his experience building products and leading engineering teams. Rehan discusses the importance of collaboration between product managers and engineers to deliver successful products. He shares insights on how building empathy and understanding each other’s perspectives through workshops and planning sessions can help engineering and product teams overcome communication challenges and work towards aligned goals. Rehan also offers advice on how engineering leaders can effectively scope projects, communicate risks to stakeholders, and continuously learn to stay on top of the latest technologies.
Subscribe to the Product Talk podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and catch every conversation with leading product executives. Episodes drop on Wednesdays.
Show Notes
- Rehan’s childhood passion for building things like Legos and RC cars led him to pursue a career in engineering.
- He shares how his experience with post-mortem examinations in medical school influenced his decision to study engineering.
- Rehan is now a senior software engineer at Splunk leading teams to build data analytics and observability solutions.
- Effective communication is key for engineering leaders to set goals, influence strategy, and ensure team success.
- Collaboration through workshops can help product and engineering teams build empathy and gain alignment.
- Scope estimation and capacity planning are important for engineering teams to set realistic timelines.
- Communicating risks early helps set proper expectations with stakeholders.
- A good product solves real user problems intuitively and has clear success criteria.
- Additional functions like marketing, sales, support are needed to deliver a great product experience.
- Engineering leaders navigate product development like ship captains guiding to success.
- Continuous learning is essential for engineers to stay on top of innovations.
- Look for candidates who make the most of opportunities through diverse internships.
- Hiring for diversity of thought and backgrounds as well as culture fit.
- Technical skills are just one aspect – also consider growth mindset and adaptability.
- Unreasonable expectations can drive true innovation over complacency.
- LinkedIn is where you can connect with Rehan for more insights and mentoring.
- Resilience and growth mindset apply to both people and product development.
- Synergy between product and engineering roles delivers the greatest potential.
- Storytelling abilities help engineering candidates showcase experiences.
- Constantly evolving technologies require continuous upskilling.
About the speaker
As a Senior Engineering Leader in Full-Stack Observability & AI Ops with 15 years in the industry, I, Rehan Mulla, have been at the forefront of Big Data Analytics & Monitoring technology. At Splunk, i helped build a multi-million dollar Observability business. My journey is distinguished by both my technical acumen(3 technical patents) and a profound understanding of the business landscape, underpinned by my Masters in Computer Science and an MBA. In revolutionizing corporate digital infrastructure, my application of AI and ML within Observability and AIOps products has significantly impacted Fortune 100 companies across the world. These contributions have dramatically reduced Mean Time to Detect (MTTD) and Mean Time to Repair (MTTR), streamlined incident remediation, and enabled preemptive identification and aversion of service outages for corporations. My contributions to build a Unified Security & Observability platform has created robust digital ecosystems, capable of withstanding emerging cyber threats. Some key areas of my expertise include: strategic leadership, expertise in High Scale Ditributed Systems and Applications, Unified Security and Observability Platform Development, building high-performance engineering teams, mentorship and diversity advocacy. I also find my purpose in giving back to the community by mentoring and coaching aspiring engineering talent.
About the host
My experience covers the trifecta of B2B Product Management, Sales, and Marketing. I also co-founded a B2C startup focused on family and education technology. I believe technology can be a creative and powerful driving force for change, and am passionate about building products that improve every day experiences.