The Product Trio
#40: A Real-World Example and Implementation Tips
Welcome to Fundament, a weekly product design newsletter where we share actionable tips and insightful stories with the worldwide design community.
In today’s episode:
What is a product trio? What are its advantages and disadvantages?
Roles in a product trio and their responsibilities
How does a product trio work in a product organization?
How to start implementing a product trio in your organization?
The Product Trio
Many organizations work in an approach that doesn’t foster the creation and development of good digital products. Products are created apart from the user and business goals. Business requirements are turned into tasks for designers, who are expected to create wireframes and hand them off for implementation.
Whether we work in Scrum or not, collaboration often looks exactly like this. This results in solutions that are disconnected from real user needs and are difficult or impossible to implement. Divisions arise between teams, which end up working in isolation with minimal communication. Additionally, team silos encourage the shifting of responsibility.
Can we do something about it? Of course we can! Let's explore the product trio approach.
What is product trio?
Product trio is a model of close, continuous, and iterative collaboration within product teams, involving three key roles: Product Manager, Designer, and Developer.
The basic starting point is a trio consisting of a PM, Designer, and Dev, but this isn't the only correct arrangement. There can be more or even fewer roles, depending on the needs and context of a given project or product. Specialists in AI, people specialized in research, business analysts, or copywriters may appear. However, a trio composed of a PM, Designer, and Dev is an excellent starting point and ensures that key areas are addressed.
This approach increases the likelihood that the products delivered by the team align with user needs while also fulfilling business objectives and addressing the product's technical requirements. It introduces a holistic approach and allows you to take into account the different perspectives that are necessary to create a good product.
The concept was invented by Marty Cagan but it was named and popularized by Teresa Torres in her book Continuous Discovery Habits.
Roles and responsibilities
In a product trio, the three previously mentioned roles are distinguished, each with its own set of responsibilities. Naturally, the scope of responsibility should be tailored to the specific organization, as there is no one-size-fits-all formula. However, below you can see an example of how these roles might be divided within a company.
Product Designer
Translate business requirements to mockups and prototypes
Contribute to product discovery
Propose new requirements based on user research
Contribute to requirements gathering
Perform visual QA
Facilitate design workshops
Advocate for user needs
Product Manager
Define vision aligned with goals
Product discovery
Gather requirements from users and stakeholders
Prioritize product features and the backlog
Plan release cycles
Prepare sprint goals and planning
Maintain product documentation
Tech Lead
Translate product vision into technical roadmap
Uphold code quality and testing standards
Input on product feasibility
Code review best practices and efficiency
Track raise tech debt
Align with PM and design on product priorities
Provide a timeline based on the scope, capacity, and estimates
Advantages of Product Trio
Product trio brings many benefits. The most essential ones are:
A holistic approach to problem-solving and product development. By fostering close collaboration between key roles, the team collectively considers business needs, user expectations, and technical constraints.
Alignment between UX, Tech, and Product happens at a very early stage—often before a formal project even takes shape.
This close collaboration helps mitigate risks related to usability, feasibility, and desirability more effectively.
Designers and developers experience much greater job satisfaction, as they are more engaged in the process and have a bigger impact. Instead of merely executing assigned tasks or waiting for finalized user stories, they actively participate in gathering, analyzing, and validating requirements. Often, they work on ideas that may never reach implementation.
Rapid validation of concepts with clients and users.
Risks related to the Product Trio
Aside from the benefits, certain risks associated with working in this method have also been identified, and they are definitely worth considering:
There is a risk that product trio teams may work in isolation from the rest of the product team, which could narrow their perspective and cause the work of the broader team to become disconnected from the trio’s efforts. To prevent this, it is crucial to communicate decisions early and consult the wider team to clarify any uncertainties.
Another risk is a blurring of responsibilities. Everyone contributes to the product vision, takes part in customer interviews, and participates in gathering requirements. This can sometimes make it difficult for the team to reach consensus and find the right balance. The essence of a product trio is to harmonize the interests of the business, users, and technology. It is essential to remember that while each team member is focused on their respective area, they are all working toward a shared goal.
Communication challenges may also arise. Working within a product trio requires team members to have exceptional soft skills that enable effective collaboration and communication. Mutual respect and understanding are fundamental to making this approach successful.
Product Trio in practice – a real world example
Once we have gone through all the necessary theory, let’s look at how product trio works in practice. Fundament’s co-author,
, has successfully implemented this approach to his two most recent teams. Here are the most important components making a product trio run like a well-oiled machine:Each week, the product manager, designer, and tech lead meet to review the priorities for the current quarter and track their progress. These meetings focus on shared topics such as ongoing discovery efforts, the latest analytics data, and feedback from customers and users. They also cover early-stage concepts that are still too underdeveloped for a design review with the broader team.
Additionally, the product manager and designer hold separate weekly meetings. These discussions revolve around the discovery process, user interviews, analytics, and prototypes needed for validation. They also cover current topics that don’t require the developer’s presence, as well as upcoming items that will soon be discussed with the full product trio to incorporate a technical perspective.
Every two weeks, the product trio conducts a design review with the entire team. These sessions focus on new concepts that have passed the early discovery phase, ensuring that the broader team is involved in upcoming initiatives early on and can provide feedback on feasibility.
At the start of each quarter, during OKR planning, the team identifies topics that require more in-depth discovery. For such topics, the quarter is typically dedicated solely to the discovery phase, while solution development and implementation are planned for the following quarter. Discovery efforts are tracked using Productboard.
From time to time, the product trio meets to discuss long-term topics, such as the multi-year product vision or new tools and technical solutions. These may not provide immediate value to users but help the product team work more effectively—for example, selecting a user analytics tool, even though final ownership of that area falls under design.
How to start?
If you have never worked with the product trio model, you might want to implement it in your organization. The difficulty level of making this change will depend on your team's openness to new approaches. It could be a challenging journey for some teams, but I’ve got you covered with a few actionable tips that will help you start cracking the wall:
Start by building awareness around the concept of a product trio and educating your team on its benefits. One way to do this? Share this article with them!
As a designer, strengthen your collaboration with the product manager. Clearly express your interest in being involved in key areas such as customer interviews, gathering requirements, contributing to the product vision, influencing long-term goals and engaging in early discovery, well before PRDs are written. You can’t just sit back and wait for a PM to hand you ready-made user stories.
It’s also valuable to bring in an experienced developer who knows the product and tech environment well. Their role is to quickly assess feasibility, often acting as a tech lead. While this title doesn’t come with formal benefits or management responsibilities, it plays a crucial role in decision-making.
Remember that a product trio should meet regularly and focus on outcomes, not just outputs. Teresa Torres emphasizes that product discovery should be an ongoing process. This can only be achieved by implementing a continuous feedback loop, which means regular check-ins with users and customers, and maintaining an outcome-focused mindset to ensure that you deliver real value instead of just shipping features.
Visual Feast
This is a new segment of Fundament where we showcase pure visual craft. Each week, we feature a talented designer's profile and recent work.
Wanna be featured next? Tag arkadiuszradek on X (Twitter).
Muhammad Tanvir
This week’s choice is Muhammad Tanvir, a talented product designer based in Bangladesh. He came to our radar because he demonstrates his attention to detail and an interesting approach to mixing flat design with skeumorphism.
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