In the last year, John has met with and coached hundreds of cross-functional product development teams. One pattern stands out. Engineering leadership is passionate about embracing "product thinking" and the shift from projects to products, but they are hitting common roadblocks repeatedly. They stumble into well-worn intuition traps. They struggle with unwinding their own defense mechanisms and rebuilding mutual trust. And they have trouble speaking the language of product...especially as it relates to the bets they are advocating for.

In this talk, we'll explore how engineering leadership can more effectively collaborate with their product management and design counterparts. What does cross-functional product DOING look like, and how can we work together to make that possible? How can you make an apples-to-apples case for working down technical debt, and investing in more resilient tooling and infra? How can you unwind the perverse incentives that keep engineers busy at the expense of outcomes and sanity?

Finally, we will explore what happens when the functional boundaries fade, revealing more capable (and happy) product teams.