Bridging engineers and business stakeholders as a product manager

As a product manager, how do you work with engineering teams and, at the same time, with stakeholders who are not technical? ```hint One decision, two audiences Pick a moment when engineers and a business team both needed to understand the same decision, and show how what you said to each group, and what you asked of each, differed. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Which non-technical groups matter most in this role: sales, customer success, marketing, support, or finance and legal? - Datadog's own users are mostly engineers. Should the answer cover customer-facing teams who relay those users' technical needs, or internal partners only? - Would you like one example where both groups were involved, or a general approach illustrated by an example? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - How the candidate builds trust and shared context with engineers: early involvement, technical fluency, respect for estimates and trade-offs - How communication changes for non-technical stakeholders: outcomes, timelines, risk and customer impact instead of implementation detail - A concrete example in which the candidate translated between the two groups to reach one decision - Mechanisms that keep both groups aligned over time, such as request intake, roadmap views and launch readiness - How a conflict between the groups' needs was resolved, and the result ### Follow-up Questions - A salesperson has promised a customer a feature engineering has not committed to. How do you handle it? - An engineer says a request from customer success is not worth building. How do you decide? - How do you explain a technical delay to a non-technical executive without losing their trust?