This study guide contains NN/g’s articles and videos on how UX professionals can collaborate effectively with product managers and mitigate common challenges such as role overlap and duplicate work. Product quality and team satisfaction increase when product-management and UX roles are partners.
Product Management vs. UX
The articles in this section help clarify product management as a discipline and the role of the product manager (also known as product owner in organizations following the Agile-scrum methodology).
Product managers and UX practitioners share the goal of delivering value to users through the product experience. The articles below describe the expertise of product managers and how they cultivate value through product-led growth.
| Number | Link | Format | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Product-Manager Archetype | Article | Common goals, strengths, challenges, activities, and skills of product managers |
| 2 | Product-Led Growth and UX | Article |
What it means to be product-led and what actions UX can take to support a product-led user experience |
| 3 | Product-Led Growth | Video |
Clarifying Responsibilities for Collaboration
It is ideal for product roles and UX to partner throughout product development, stay strategically aligned, and take responsibility for tasks that fall within their areas of expertise. Unfortunately, this doesn’t always happen. One role may unknowingly do the work of another or assume it to be within (or outside) the scope of their job.
When there is confusion about responsibilities in product development, work is duplicated, teams waste time, and people get frustrated.
Use the articles and frameworks below to align role expectations and job responsibilities so you can collaborate and maintain momentum in product development.
| Number | Link | Format | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | UXers and Product Managers Both Say Others Intrude on Their Work | Article | NN/g research findings on role overlap, why duplicative work happens, and its effects |
| 2 | PM and UX Have Markedly Different Views of Their Job Responsibilities | Article | NN/g research findings on how product and UX roles are not always aligned on work responsibilities |
| 3 | Setting UX Roles and Responsibilities in Product Development: The RACI Template | Article |
A framework for assigning roles and responsibilities at the outset of initiatives |
| 4 | RACI for UX Roles and Responsibilities | Video | |
| 5 | Successful Projects: 7 Tips for Better Collaboration | Video |
How to set and manage expectations from project start to finish |
| 6 | Product & UX Partnerships | Video |
Best practices for partnering through discovery, design, testing, and launch |
| 7 | Video |
How to share research and maintain communication with product partners |
Using Roadmaps to Plan Product and UX Work
Roadmaps (and the process of roadmapping) are an area where UX and product managers can share the responsibility of planning, prioritizing, and communicating product development. By aligning these efforts with specific goals, roadmaps help orient the team around problems to solve and opportunities to explore in user research.
Roadmaps can vary in scope and focus. They might cover the work of the entire product team or just the user experience team. This flexibility helps everyone understand the big picture and efforts that shouldn't be overlooked or rushed during product development.
Use the articles and videos below to understand the process of creating and maintaining a roadmap and how various roadmap scopes can work together to plan for and keep product-development efforts on track.
| Number | Link | Format | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The 6 Steps to Roadmapping | Article | How to create product and UX roadmaps |
| 2 | 3 Types of Roadmaps in UX and Product Design | Article |
How roadmaps can help product managers, and UX stay strategically aligned |
| 3 | 3 Types of Roadmaps | Video |
Related Topics and Study Guides
Product managers are key strategic stakeholders. See the following articles and videos to aid in further developing relationships and establishing collaborative product-development practices.
| Number | Link | Format | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | UX Stakeholders: Study Guide | Article | How to involve stakeholders in research and build buy-in for UX |
| 2 | UX Strategy: Study Guide | Article | How to create a product vision, define goals, and make a plan for how to get there |
| 3 | Lean UX & Agile: Study Guide | Article | Lean methods for iterative product improvement |
| 4 | Minimize Design Risk by Focusing on Outcomes, Not Features | Article | 5 steps for moving from outputs to outcomes – a first step in working productively with product managers |
| 5 | Outcomes Over Outputs | Video |
