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Professional practice · Competent · Lesson 37 of 99 · 18 min video, then about 2 hours of practice
Working with product managers inside a delivery process
After this you can divide problem and solution ownership with a PM, slot design work into sprints without becoming the bottleneck, and disagree productively.
Why it matters
The PM relationship decides more about a designer's day than any tool. Healthy teams share the problem space (the PM owns why and when, design owns how it should work for people, engineering owns how it gets built), and everyone argues across those lines. Learn where design sits in a sprint (usually a sprint or two ahead, with discovery running in parallel), how to bring a PM evidence rather than preferences, and how to say 'not yet' to a feature without saying no. Trap: waiting to be handed requirements. A designer who only receives tickets is a production resource, and gets treated as one.
How to use this resource
Specific, recent and from the designer's side of the relationship: how to share ownership of the problem with a PM, what to bring to them, and where the friction usually comes from. Pitched at seniors, but the dynamics apply from day one.