PM, Eng, & Design as a '3-Legged Stool'
Vercel Staff Product Designer Tom Johnson describes the ideal product team as a "3-legged stool" with equal partnership. In this model, the PM advocates for the business, Engineering for the technology, and Design for the user. Success is driven by the compromises made between these three pillars, ensuring a balanced and robust product.
The "product trio" concept was named and popularized by Teresa Torres, author of "Continuous Discovery Habits," building on principles championed by product leadership expert Marty Cagan. This model moves teams away from a siloed, hand-off approach where product managers write requirements for designers, who then deliver mockups to engineers. Instead, it emphasizes a continuous, collaborative partnership from the very beginning of the product discovery process. At its core, the trio is about shared ownership and understanding. The three roles are not just occasionally collaborating; they are jointly interviewing customers, mapping out opportunities, and testing solutions together. This ensures that business viability (PM), user desirability (Design), and technical feasibility (Engineering) are considered in tandem throughout the entire development cycle, rather than as separate, sequential stages. In practice, this collaborative model relies on a variety of tools and routines. Teams at companies like Figma use FigJam and Miro for brainstorming and design critiques, creating a shared space for early-stage ideas. Asynchronous communication tools like Slack and Notion are used for quick updates, while a centralized project management tool like Jira or Shortcut helps track the workflow from story creation by the PM to task breakdown by engineering. However, the model is not without its challenges. Economic pressures and resource constraints can lead to imbalanced "lopsided trios," where a single designer might support multiple product managers, or engineers far outnumber designers. This can result in designers being brought into the process too late, relegated to a "screen-producing function" rather than being a strategic partner. To mitigate this, clear role definitions and a shared understanding of who owns which decisions are crucial. Ultimately, the success of the three-legged stool hinges on moving from a "mercenary" mindset—where team members simply execute tasks they are given—to a "missionary" one. As advocated by Marty Cagan, missionary teams are driven by a shared mission and a deep understanding of their customer's context and needs. This collective ownership empowers the team to innovate and solve real problems, leading to more robust and successful products.
