A strong rapport between a product manager (PM) and a UX strategist is crucial for a product’s success, especially during the design phase. This collaborative relationship helps with a shared understanding, streamlines decision-making, and ultimately leads to a more user-centric and effective product design cycle. At Neurealm, we have successfully implemented this model for our customers by anchoring the complete software design and development lifecycle using this skillset combination. As a result, we have gained valuable insights into the advantages of such a model for our product-based customers. Here are our key takeaways:

1. Shared vision and aligned goals

The PM defines the “what” and “why” – the product vision, business objectives, market needs, and key performance indicators (KPIs). The UX strategist defines the “how” – how users will interact with the product to achieve their goals – focusing on user needs, pain points, and usability.

Outcome: Effective communication and understanding of perspectives. This leads to a truly shared vision where business goals are intrinsically linked with user needs. The PM and UX strategist can co-create a product strategy that is both viable and desirable, ensuring the design phase begins with a unified purpose. Without this, the design might cater to business goals but alienate users, or vice versa.

For a telecom customer, the Neurealm team proactively managed potential issues by sharing product roadmaps early and collaborating on a plan of action with all teams involved. This allowed the customer to anticipate and mitigate future pitfalls in product development and new product feature releases.

2. Efficient and effective communication

Good rapport encourages an environment of open and honest communication. PM and UX strategist can challenge each other respectfully, brainstorm ideas freely, and provide constructive feedback without fear of damaging the relationship. Clear communication minimizes misinterpretations of requirements, user research findings, and design decisions. It also saves time and resources that would otherwise be spent on rework.

Outcome: Effective communication leads to faster decision making. When there’s trust and understanding, decisions can be made more quickly and confidently. The PM trusts the UX strategist’s expertise in user experience, and the UX strategist understands the PM’s business constraints and opportunities.

In case of another customer, regular workshops and design reviews with UX strategist and PM working in sync helped in eradicating communication blockers. Understanding the business and market background on product decisions made tasks clear. With PM and UX strategist communicating effectively, the conversion of ideas from ‘what’ is to be achieved into ‘how’ it can be achieved in a given quarter became easy with very little rework. This reduced the risks and challenges in the implementation phase of the product.

3. Holistic understanding of user needs and business value

The PM brings market insights, competitive analysis, and an understanding of the business model. The UX strategist brings deep user research (interviews, surveys, usability testing), persona development, and journey mapping.

Outcome: Strategic business opportunities getting discussed and vetted. UX strategists can then explore these through a user lens. Conversely, the UX strategist’s user insights reveal unmet needs or pain points that the PM can leverage for new product features or improvements, leading to a product that is both commercially successful and genuinely useful.

For our healthcare and telecom customers, a holistic understanding of the product was critical to their success. The comprehensive view, treating the product as a whole rather than a collection of team-specific responsibilities, ensured the published product roadmap made complete sense.

4. Proactive problem solving and risk mitigation

With good rapport, both parties are more likely to proactively identify potential design flaws, usability issues, or business-user misalignment early in the design phase. They can then work together to brainstorm solutions, weigh trade-offs, and pivot if necessary.

Outcome: This prevents costly rework later in the development cycle. The UX strategist can more effectively advocate for the user’s needs when they have the PM’s trust and support, ensuring user-centricity remains a priority throughout the design process.

When serving our customers, the UX strategist and PM also worked together to anchor the complete SDLC. Detailed workshopping with Development, QA and customer success teams helped work towards a low risk agile sprints.

5. Seamless integration of user experience into product backlog

A strong PM-UX strategist relationship allows for better prioritization of UX-related tasks and features within the product roadmap and backlog. The PM understands the value of UX investments, and the UX strategist can articulate the business impact of addressing specific user needs. They share ownership of the user experience, ensuring that UX considerations are not an afterthought but are woven into the very fabric of the product.

For our product customers, daily tasks of the PM entailed creating detailed documents of the backlog, creating tickets and talking to all stakeholders to get the expectations right. After documentation, the PM and UX strategist had regular meetings and discussions to finalize the feature design. UX strategist and PM together had a working meeting with the development team to check on the feasibility and forecast future pitfalls. Timelines were also discussed during these meets. After the feedback and changes, the finalised design was then shared and the other teams like QA and customer teams were given a walkthrough to close the loop.

6. Stronger business outcomes & ROI

1. Reduced development waste: Identifying and addressing usability issues and validating user needs early (a core tenet of UX strategy supported by PM alignment) significantly reduces costly rework later in the development cycle.
2. Increased conversion rates & revenue: A well-designed user experience, born from PM-UX strategist collaboration, can directly lead to higher conversion rates (e.g., sign-ups, purchases) and customer lifetime value.
3. Improved market differentiation: Products that offer superior user experiences often stand out in crowded markets. The PM-UX strategist partnership can drive innovation w.r.t. how users interact with the product, creating a competitive advantage.

7. Enhanced creativity and innovation

The PM and UX strategist bring different but complementary skills and diverse perspectives. When they collaborate effectively, this diversity can spark more innovative solutions. Good rapport encourages “what if” discussions, where they can explore unconventional ideas and push the boundaries of the design, leading to truly differentiating features.

8. Empowered and motivated teams:

When user needs are clearly articulated (UX) and linked to business objectives (PM), the entire team has clarity and a stronger sense of purpose. A collaborative PM-UX strategist relationship minimizes ambiguity and conflicting directives, leading to reduced friction and a more harmonious and productive work environment.

While partnering with customers from different domains, we have seen that when PM and UX strategists anchor the design cycles, the other team members become more involved for a shared goal. There is more passion for the product vision. Working passionately from ideas to execution throughout the product development lifecycle towards this shared vision for the product success is a direct result of the collaborative leadership of UX strategist and PM.

Closing thoughts

A strong partnership between a UX strategist and a Product Manager is crucial for product success. This collaboration ensures the right product is built, and it’s built well, directly boosting adoption and retention rates.

Essentially, a robust rapport between these roles transforms the design phase from simple handoffs into a dynamic partnership. This synergy helps anticipate setbacks, manage scope creep, achieve design goals, and ensures teams deliver their best work. The result is a product that’s not only technically feasible and commercially viable, but also highly desired and intuitive for users, leading to a superior product experience and greater market success.