How’s Your EM–PM Dynamic?
Whenever I coach engineering managers or product managers, I tell them - “you need to be best friends”. Of course, I don’t mean socially necessarily, but professionally. The aspiration should be a knit-tight, trust-filled working relationship. I often point people to Inspired by Marty Cagan as a vision of what that partnership can look like. And while I know the dynamic described in that book is rare in practice, I still believe it's worth investing time and energy into optimizing the relationship with that kind of clarity and direction in mind. This is the first article in a 3-part series of insights from my experience building and supporting strong EM/PM partnerships.
Assess and Map your Roles and Responsibilities
Before you can build a better working relationship, you need to assess the one you already have. Are you just starting to collaborate? Is one of you new to the team or company? Or are you dealing with long-standing friction - mistrust, role confusion, or baggage from previous misalignments? Naming where you are will open the door to moving forward. Don’t do this alone - this is a job for both you and your counterpart.
It’s surprisingly common for Product and Engineering to assume the other person “should be” handling something - roadmaps, sprints, stakeholder updates, delivery estimates, etc.. Take the time to sit down and map out who owns what today. Then talk about what the ideal ownership would look like.
If you find yourselves disagreeing about who should own a specific responsibility (for example, who runs scrum meetings), lean into that disagreement. There’s real value in surfacing and navigating that conflict together, and in reaching a clear, conscious agreement rather than letting assumptions go unspoken or unresolved.
Marty Cagan’s Inspired offers a helpful baseline here - especially his view that strong product teams are built on clear, collaborative roles. His work emphasizes that product managers should be accountable for building the right product, while engineering ensures it's built right. In practice, that line can blur, and it’s your job to draw it together.
Do you want help strengthening your product-engineering partnership? Unsure how to resolve the conflicts, or how to communicate to your counterpart that you’re willing to put in the work? At Elevate(Her), we support women and allies in tech through coaching, facilitated peer groups, and real talk about the challenges of leadership. Take your first step here.