By Andrew Park | 2025-02-04
Q: How do you convince engineers that becoming Product Engineers and taking ownership is in their best interest?
A: The key to convincing engineers to embrace the Product Engineer mindset is showing them how high agency and ownership make them more valuable, increase job stability, and open up greater career opportunities. Engineers who deeply understand the product and its business impact are no longer just executors of tasks—they become strategic contributors who influence outcomes. This leads to more autonomy, less micromanagement, and a stronger voice in decision-making. POSE naturally reinforces this shift by embedding engineers in product discussions, ensuring they see firsthand how their work impacts users and business goals. When engineers connect their technical skills to real-world impact, their motivation, job satisfaction, and career trajectory improve significantly.
Q: With POSE, since there are no sprint reviews, how does the Product Manager gate what goes into production?
A: In POSE, the Product Manager has full control over what goes into production. While there are no formal sprint reviews as in Scrum, once a feature is completed, it is demoed to the Product Manager to confirm that it meets the definition of done and aligns with product expectations. This continuous review process ensures that only validated, high-quality features are released. Because Product Engineers work closely with the Product Manager throughout development, this approach streamlines decision-making and reduces unnecessary meetings.
Q: Are PRDs needed in POSE? If so, who writes them?
A: PRDs are still useful in POSE, but their creation is a collaborative effort between Product Managers and Flex Engineers. A Product Manager can draft the PRD or leverage the Flex Engineer to do so, then serve as the reviewer. With GenAI tools, a Product Manager can quickly generate an initial draft that communicates the larger vision and hand it off to the Flex Engineer for refinement, ensuring technical feasibility and implementation readiness. It is essential that the Flex Engineer has a strong first-hand understanding of what is being built, why it’s being built, who it’s for, and what a successful outcome looks like. This deep knowledge is crucial because the Flex Engineer plays a key role in propagating critical product information to the rest of the engineers, as well as to QA. By ensuring all teams have access to clear, well-structured product context, POSE reduces misunderstandings, accelerates development, and aligns execution across all disciplines.
Q: Is the Flex Engineer an intermediary for the Product Manager to communicate directly with the rest of the Product Engineers?
A: No, the Flex Engineer is not a gatekeeper between the Product Manager and Product Engineers. POSE encourages direct collaboration between them. However, the Flex Engineer plays a crucial role in enhancing bidirectional information flow, particularly addressing the common gap where engineering work-in-progress is a black box to Product Managers. By monitoring Daily Reports, resolving blockers in real time, and maintaining deep awareness of technical progress, the Flex Engineer ensures the Product Manager has clear, timely visibility into what’s happening in engineering. This allows for faster decision-making, better alignment, and fewer disruptions to focused development work.
Q: What is the difference between the Flex Engineer role and a Tech Lead role?
A: The Flex Engineer in POSE is focused on real-time collaboration, cross-team alignment, and unblocking development, while a Tech Lead is primarily responsible for deep technical decision-making, architectural guidance, and mentoring engineers. Unlike a Tech Lead, who concentrates on long-term technical strategy, the Flex Engineer operates across teams to ensure smooth execution, resolve blockers, and keep the Product Manager informed. Flex Engineers also monitor Daily Reports, giving them continuous awareness of progress, dependencies, and emerging issues. Additionally, they have a strong understanding of architectural technical debt, helping teams make trade-offs without accumulating unnecessary complexity. While these roles differ, Tech Leads are often excellent candidates to be Flex Engineers due to their technical expertise and leadership skills, making the transition natural for those who enjoy real-time problem-solving and coordination.
Q: Is there a need for a Scrum Master or Project Manager in POSE?
A: POSE eliminates the need for a traditional Scrum Master or Project Manager by integrating coordination directly into the team. Flex Engineers act as lightweight project managers as part of their role, facilitating real-time collaboration and resolving technical blockers. A key enabler of this is the Daily Reports mechanism, which provides broad and deep visibility into the progress of every individual engineer. Flex Engineers read these reports daily, keeping them fully up to speed, which is why the Product Manager can typically call them and get an accurate progress update within seconds or minutes—eliminating the need for frequent status meetings and unnecessary process overhead.
Q: How does POSE cultivate “engineering missionaries” as opposed to “engineering mercenaries”?
A: POSE fosters a high sense of ownership by giving engineers a clear view of the people they are helping with their work. Most engineers are natural problem solvers who find deep satisfaction in using their skills to make a real impact. Those in the Flex Engineer role gain significant exposure to customers as part of their Product Trio responsibilities, ensuring they deeply understand user needs. They share this knowledge with the rest of the Product Engineers, keeping the entire team freshly aware of the “what” and “why” behind their work. This direct connection to customer impact fuels passion and energy, transforming engineers into “missionaries” who drive meaningful outcomes rather than “mercenaries” executing tasks without context.
Q: What are the career benefits for software engineers who take on the responsibilities of a Product Engineer?
A: Becoming a Product Engineer makes software engineers significantly more valuable to their company by expanding their skill set beyond coding to include product strategy, business alignment, and cross-functional collaboration. This broader expertise leads to greater job stability, increased leadership opportunities, and higher earning potential. Product Engineers are trusted to make impactful decisions, reducing reliance on top-down management and positioning themselves as indispensable contributors to both technical execution and product success. This career evolution future-proofs their role, making them more resilient to market shifts and organizational changes.
Q: Does POSE eliminate the need for Jira and documentation?
A: POSE does not eliminate Jira or documentation but significantly reduces reliance on them by shifting toward direct collaboration and product knowledge sharing. Product Engineers develop a deep understanding of the product vision, reducing the need for detailed user stories and excessive task tracking. Instead, lightweight documentation is maintained in shared tools (e.g., Confluence, internal Wikis, or Notion). This approach minimizes overhead while ensuring critical knowledge is accessible without burdening the Product Manager or slowing down development.
Q: How do Product Engineers build product-oriented skills quickly to adapt to this new environment?
A: Product Engineers build product-oriented skills by engaging in product discussions, collaborating with Product Managers and Designers, and focusing on user needs and business objectives. They refine decision-making by balancing technical feasibility with product impact and learning from real-world trade-offs. A key best practice is documenting acquired product knowledge in a shared tool (e.g., Confluence, an internal Wiki, or Notion), ensuring insights accumulate to a critical mass without burdening the Product Manager. Leveraging AI with Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) further enhances this process by dynamically serving up relevant information, allowing engineers to quickly access and apply knowledge in real-time, fostering a scalable, self-sustaining culture of product awareness.
Q: What is the new scope for Product Managers under POSE methodology?
A: Under POSE, Product Managers shift their focus away from task-level execution and backlog grooming toward higher-level strategy, market analysis, and deep collaboration with designers and engineers. Since Product Engineers handle technical alignment and execution details, Product Managers gain more time to refine product vision, conduct customer research, and drive strategic initiatives. This shift enables Product Managers to work at a more impactful level without being bogged down by day-to-day development coordination.
Q: Will all Product Managers need to build the engineer’s skill set?
A: In small companies with a single team, Product Managers benefit greatly from developing a stronger technical acumen. With fewer layers between product and engineering, understanding system constraints and emerging technologies enables faster decision-making, clearer communication, and stronger collaboration with engineers. While they don’t need to become engineers, a technical foundation helps them navigate trade-offs more effectively and drive innovation without relying on intermediaries. POSE streamlines execution, allowing Product Managers to focus on strategy, but in smaller teams, technical fluency is a key advantage for maximizing impact.
Q: How does POSE guarantee that Flex Engineers are not the ones now dealing with burnout?
A: While the Flex Engineer takes on operational tasks that traditionally fall to Product Managers—particularly in managing multiple teams—the total workload is much smaller than a full Product Manager role. These tasks are also significantly easier for the Flex Engineer to handle due to their deep engineering expertise, allowing them to resolve technical alignment issues quickly and efficiently without the friction a less technical Product Manager might face. By reducing process overhead and enabling seamless execution, the Flex Engineer enhances team agility without absorbing unsustainable workloads.
Q: How does the role of a Flex Engineer contrast with that of an Agile Product Owner?
A: The Flex Engineer in POSE is a senior technical team member who facilitates real-time collaboration, removes blockers, and ensures seamless technical execution across teams, while the Agile Product Owner in Scrum focuses on backlog management, prioritization, and aligning development with business goals. Unlike the Product Owner, who guides development through structured planning and stakeholder communication, the Flex Engineer operates within engineering to accelerate execution, reduce reliance on formal processes, and enable faster technical decision-making, complementing product strategy with real-time problem-solving.
Q: How does the role of a Flex Engineer contrast with that of a Software Delivery Manager?
A: The Flex Engineer in POSE is a hands-on technical expert who facilitates real-time collaboration, resolves blockers, and ensures cross-team alignment, while the Software Delivery Manager focuses on project coordination, timelines, and stakeholder communication. The Flex Engineer requires deep technical expertise, problem-solving skills, and adaptability to support engineering efforts, whereas the Software Delivery Manager relies on project management, risk mitigation, and organizational skills to ensure smooth delivery.
Q: How does the role of a Flex Engineer contrast with that of a Technical Product Manager?
A: The Flex Engineer in POSE is an embedded technical expert focused on real-time collaboration, resolving engineering blockers, and ensuring seamless technical execution across teams, while a Technical Product Manager (TPM) defines product requirements, prioritizes features, and aligns development with business goals. Unlike the TPM, who operates at the intersection of product strategy and engineering planning, the Flex Engineer works within the development team to optimize technical workflows, reduce dependencies on meetings, and accelerate execution through direct problem-solving.