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Product Thinking

Lessons from Bridging Stakeholders and Engineers

Taninwat Kaewpankan
2025-12-17
5 min read

One of the most useful things I've learned is how to translate between engineers and stakeholders. They often want the same thing but describe it differently. My job was to help them understand each other.

The Communication Gap

At Trailr.ai, I sat between the CEO and the engineering team. The CEO would say things like:

"I want the dashboard to feel more premium."

And the engineers would ask:

"What does 'premium' mean technically?"

This is a common problem. Business people think in terms of feelings and outcomes. Engineers think in terms of code and constraints. Both are valid — they're just different ways of seeing the same thing.

My Role as a Translator

I realized my value wasn't just in writing code. It was in translating requirements into something actionable. When the CEO said "premium," I would break it down:

  • Smoother animations (specific CSS transitions)
  • Better spacing (consistent padding and margins)
  • Faster loading (performance optimization)

This gave the engineers something concrete to build.

Three Things I Learned

1. Ask "why" before "how"

When someone requests a feature, I try to understand the reason behind it. Sometimes the solution they're asking for isn't the best way to solve their actual problem.

2. Write things down

Before any big feature, I started writing short documents that explained:

  • What we're building
  • Why we're building it
  • What success looks like

This kept everyone aligned and saved time in meetings.

3. Learn enough of both languages

I don't need to be the best engineer or the best strategist. But I need to understand both sides enough to spot when something is lost in translation.

Why This Matters for Product Management

Product Managers spend a lot of time communicating. They need to explain technical constraints to executives and business priorities to developers. Being good at this translation work is probably the most underrated PM skill.

I'm still learning, but every project teaches me something new about how to bring people together around a shared goal.