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.