Questions

As a non technical founder, I am trying to manage and align the progress of the non technical team and the technical team towards our milestone. The challenge that I am facing is mapping out the product roadmap. Because of my limited technical knowledge, I can't see as far as I'd like to while taking into account bug fixes or technical challenges that we are facing. I am now working with my technical cofounder more closely in terms of understanding our product's technical stack so that I can better predict the challenges and potential of our product and work together to lay out the roadmap. I was thinking of picking up basic programming so I can at least understand what my dev team is telling me instead of trying to imagine it. Is this the right approach?

I would suggest that you do not distract yourself with trying to become more technical. First of all, the value you bring to the company is representing customer needs and the strategic direction of the product. If you become too mired in the technical details, you start making decisions based on technical facility as opposed to what you can offer the market. If you do not produce something that the market demands, you might as well shut down the company. Your technical leads will advise you on what is possible and reasonable, and you will always have that healthy push and pull between "desired" and "practical" and those two forces should work together to help you build a roadmap that serves both your customers and your business.

Secondly, your technical knowledge will grow organically as you gain experience building a product. I consider myself very technically well-versed but I am not a technical resource. I don't have any formal technical education but I can speak knowledgeably about architecture, platforms, design and implementation to a certain point at which I will actually be detrimental to my team if I try to venture into any further detail. I hired them and chose to work with them because I can throw problems and issues at them and they will design the best solution. I don't want to debate their technical challenges. All of my technical knowledge has come from years of working with technical teams and designing products. I have it, I like having it, but I never let it govern decisions I make as a product owner and manager.

My advice to you is to stay out of the weeds and do what your team needs you to do - advocate for the vision and the market potential of your product and let a strong technical lead drive the architecture and technical roadmap. You will be in constant healthy negotiation around prioritisation and a good technical lead will "get" the business demand and value and work to find the best plan for implementation.


Answered 8 years ago

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