The primary source of friction between product and project functions isn't a lack of skills but rather unclear ownership, siloed planning, and conflicting success metrics. The solution is proactive, early alignment on roles, tools, and a shared definition of success.
Related Insights
Friction between teams often arises from deeply misaligned values, not just personality clashes. A "move fast" team measured by DAUs will inevitably conflict with a "reliability" team measured by uptime SLAs. True alignment requires shared goals, not just shared projects.
The biggest pain point in product-project collaboration is the "handoff" mentality, where one team considers its work done after passing it on. This signals a breakdown in shared ownership. Instead of handoffs, teams need continuous, conversational engagement to ensure success.
When different departments push their own projects onto the sales team, reps get overloaded. To solve this, enablement leaders must shift the focus of every initiative away from departmental priorities and toward a shared customer outcome. This unified goal minimizes internal friction and clarifies what's truly important.
Engineering often defaults to a 'project mindset,' focusing on churning out features and measuring velocity. True alignment with product requires a 'product mindset,' which prioritizes understanding the customer and tracking the value being delivered, not just the output.
Go-to-market success isn't just about high-performing marketing, sales, and CS teams. The true differentiator is the 'connective tissue'—shared ICP definitions, terminology, and smooth handoffs. This alignment across functions, where one team's actions directly impact the next, is where most organizations break down.
To resolve conflicts, follow Marty Cagan's model: Product Managers are responsible for business outcomes, while engineering teams own the technical implementation. The architect's role is to enable both parties and facilitate the connection, not to override either domain.
Product leaders often try to implement agile best practices within their team, but fail because the surrounding organization still operates on a project-based model. The rest of the company treats the product team like a feature factory, handing over requests and demanding deadlines, creating immense internal friction.
The 'CEO of the product' metaphor is misleading because product managers lack direct authority. A better analogy is 'the glue.' The PM's role is to connect different functions—engineering, sales, marketing—with strategy, data, and user problems to ensure the team works cohesively towards a shared goal.
In an organization still running in project mode, the 'Product Manager' title is misleading. The role is often relegated to organizing work and scheduling tasks for engineering. A true product model requires empowering these roles with the mandate, skills, and market access to make strategic decisions.
To bridge cultural and departmental divides, the product team initiated a process of constantly sharing and, crucially, explaining granular user data. This moved conversations away from opinions and localized goals toward a shared, data-informed understanding of the core problems, making it easier to agree on solutions.
