The Product Trio: Why Three is the Magic Number

Good things come in threes. You get three wishes from a genie, The Three Little Pigs, The Three Musketeers, the three flavors of Neapolitan ice cream, I could go on. There’s a lot to back up De La Soul’s claim (or technically, Bob Dorough’s claim if we’re citing our sources properly), and the product trio is another of these magic three-ways.  

In the product world, there are a lot of concepts and ideas revolving around thirds. There’s the best roadmap format Now-Next-Later (fun fact: created by our very own Co-founders), not to mention the Build-Measure-Learn process. Well, let us introduce you to another that’s gotten a lot of play in recent years: The product trio.  

The product trio is one of many product team structures you can adopt. A formation of how to piece together the key roles within your product team. It’s a format designed to help boost collaboration between traditionally siloed roles, leading to better outputs and more synced-up product development.

It’s become super popular, having been used by the likes of Spotify and Airbnb and talked about heavily by one of the great Product Leaders, Teresa Torres. Here’s a detailed look at the product trio to help you understand how it works, why you should use it, and how to implement it properly within your team. 

If you’re keen to explore more about your product team structure, we’ve got an article that helps you nail it, covering multiple types of team configurations and sage advice from Product experts. Check it out below ⬇️:

What is the product trio? 

The product trio is the deliberate coming together of three key roles related to product discovery and development: The Product Manager, the Engineer, and the Product Designer. In the product trio, these cross-functional roles work collaboratively to help inform decisions and ideation that lead to a much better product. 

See, before the product trio, each of these roles would usually operate in a more isolated way. Each would be focusing on their area of expertise with little crossover, aside from a weekly stand-up where more often or not you learn that your efforts were misaligned. 

By creating the product trio, you give every role visibility of the product development at every stage. Each role is involved from the very beginning. The Engineer and Designer have access to product discovery, the Product Manager is clued up about the build stage, and in general, there’s more accountability and collaboration in this model. 

This close collaboration means that decisions are made faster, roadblocks are cleared more efficiently, and everyone stays on the same page. It’s not just about building great products; it’s about building them with less friction and a whole lot more fun.

Each role typically champions one of three core product concerns: 

• Viability: This covers the commercial aspect, examining whether a product is a sound investment. The Product Manager focuses on aligning the product vision with business goals, ensuring that the product makes sense in the market landscape.
• Desirability: This refers to the degree to which customers need and value a solution. The Product Designer often leads the charge in understanding user needs and translating those into design solutions that resonate.
• Feasibility: This is all about the technical side of things. The Engineer evaluates whether the proposed solutions can be realistically built, ensuring that the design aligns with what is technically possible.

Without the product trio structure, these responsibilities are isolated to the specific role only. This can lead to annoying situations where a Designer has dreamed up a stunning product idea, only to be told that it’s not feasible by an Engineer. 

The idea with the product trio is that over time, the constant visibility and synced-up nature of the team will make team members start to consider other things. A Designer will start to think about the viability of their idea, ensuring that it delivers the best user experience while also helping to achieve business objectives. This fluidity encourages the team to think beyond their primary roles and tackle challenges from different angles, creating more efficient product development. 

What are the three roles in a product trio? 

We’ve touched on them a bit, but let’s dive deeper into the three roles that make the product trio what it is.  Each role brings a unique perspective and set of skills to the team, contributing to a well-rounded approach to product development. Let’s take a little look: 

1. Product Manager

Hey, that’s you (most likely anyway). Now, a lot of people view the Product Manager as the captain of the ship, the leader of the product trio. We don’t like that, because it suggests that the other roles aren’t as important – and that’s just not true. You need the Engineer and Designer as equally as you need the Product Manager. 

Instead, let’s consider the Product Manager as the driver. They steer the direction and ensure that what gets made aligns with the company vision. They define what to build through a Product Requirement Document (PRD) and track the progress through the roadmap. 

By the way, if you need a hand putting together a PRD, we’ve got this handy template you can download and edit to make your own. 

So what will a Product Manager do within the product trio? Well, some key responsibilities include: 

• Vision and strategy: The PM establishes the product vision and long-term strategy based on market research, user feedback, and business goals. 
• Prioritization: With limited resources and time, the PM prioritizes features and initiatives, balancing customer desires with technical feasibility and business viability. 
• Stakeholder communication: The PM serves as the bridge between various stakeholders, ensuring everyone is aligned and informed about product goals, timelines, and updates. 
• Performance tracking: After launch, the PM monitors product performance through analytics and user feedback, iterating on the product based on insights gathered. 

For a full list of Product Manager tasks and responsibilities, check out the article below: 

2. Designer

The Product Designer is focused on making your product look and feel good, creating user flows, and thinking about the UX and UI of the product to enhance customer experience. The goal here is to make something user-friendly, highly functional and good looking. They’re focused on making your product as desirable as possible. Some key responsibilities include:

• Prototyping and wireframing: Using customer research, the Designer creates prototypes and wireframes to visualize how the product will look and function. This allows for early feedback and iterative improvements before development begins.
• UI/UX design: The Designer crafts the user interface and experience, focusing on creating a seamless, engaging journey for customers. 
• Collaboration with Engineers: The Designer works closely with the Developers to ensure that the design can be implemented effectively. They provide specifications and support during the development process, addressing any design-related questions or challenges.

3. Engineers

These guys are the builders. The people who turn your concepts and ideas into tangible software and tools that can be used and experienced. They’re down in the nitty-gritty of writing code and managing the technical aspect of the product to bring it to life. 

It’s important to see your Engineer as a core role within your product trio and wider product team. If you dismiss them from the earlier planning and put them in the box of ‘engineering’ or ‘development’ you’ll isolate them and build walls that keep them in the dark when it comes to the wider process. Shine the spotlight on your Developers and make them a standout part of your team. 

The things Engineers should do in a product trio include: 

• Technical feasibility: The Engineer assesses the feasibility of proposed features, evaluating whether they can be built within the existing technical constraints. 
• Development: The Engineer writes code and builds the product according to the design specifications provided by the Designer. 
• Responding to testing and QA findings: Engineers work closely with the QA Team who conduct testing to ensure the product functions as intended. Developers will work to fix any bugs identified during QA to  optimize performance, and enhance the overall quality of the product or feature before launch.

What are the advantages of the product trio team structure? 

So what’s the allure of the product trio? Why is it becoming a fundamental team structure that more and more PMs and Product Teams are following? Well, the simple answer is that it’s better than what we were doing before. It’s transforming the potential of product teams, making them more effective while helping them to build bigger and better products. The list of benefits is extensive. 

Collaboration

The biggest, most identifiable benefit of the product trio is that it boosts collaboration to a whole other level. It fosters a unique blend of skills and expertise that helps improve execution. 

You’re all in a better position to make informed decisions on the product, as you’ll ALL understand user needs, technical capabilities, and business objectives. It resolves conflict quickly and prevents conflict. 

User-focus

The composition of the product trio helps to emphasize a commitment to a user-centric approach to your product development. Of course, this is down to you as the Product Manager as you uncover user insights and conduct customer research. However, because of the close-knit nature of the product trio, the rest of the team will have a deeper understanding of customer needs and pain points, helping them to create a better product. 

Alignment

A well-formed product trio ensures that everyone stays aligned on the product’s direction. With the Product Manager, Designer, and Engineer working side-by-side, there’s less room for miscommunication or silos. Everyone is clued in on priorities and can make adjustments on the fly without losing sight of the bigger picture. It’s like having three parts of the brain working in perfect unison, keeping the project on track and on point.

Speed

By having this trifecta of talent working closely together, the product trio naturally speeds up the development process. With quicker feedback loops and real-time problem-solving, decisions can be made rapidly. No more waiting around for approvals or lengthy email threads – just fast, effective action that gets things done and moves the product forward.

What are the common mistakes when implementing a product trio structure?

Of course, to get the most out of the product trio, you need to do things properly. You may already be working in a product trio, and that’s fantastic. Yet, far too many teams are making key mistakes in how they operate this squad, making the whole framework kind of pointless. These mistakes are known as anti-patterns and can reduce the effectiveness of your product trio. 

Let’s take a look at these common mistakes – these anti-patterns – and explore the solutions to these problems so that you can make sure that your product trio structure is effective. 

1. Siloed work due to strictly defined roles

Sure, having clear roles can help keep things running smoothly and give your team accountability, but when boundaries become too rigid, collaboration can suffer. 

Despite the product trio being designed to help you avoid it, team members may start working in silos and focus on their strict duties. People can begin to disengage from parts of the project that technically fall outside their remit. The result? Inefficient handoffs and missed opportunities for input.

The solution:

Break down those walls! Encourage a more collaborative approach where everyone, regardless of their title, can contribute their insights. Let your Designer, Engineer, and Product Manager weigh in on every aspect of the project, fostering a sense of ownership and keeping communication lines wide open. You can do this with regular standups to track progress, as well as by having a roadmap that’s visible to all. After all, teamwork makes the dream work, right?

If you use ProdPad as your central Product Management tool, then you’ll be able to give everyone in your whole organization the ability to easily submit product ideas, feedback or join discussions and see progress of everything in your backlog and beyond. This is how you foster a true product culture where contribution from everyone is encouraged and supported. 

2. Separating the product trio from the rest of the team

There are many roles, outside of the product trio, that play a massive part in product development. There’s a risk, if you focus too much on the product trio alone, that you make it feel like a secret club, ignoring everyone else. You don’t want to employ the product trio structure in a way that makes the rest of the team feel left out and on the fringes. 

There’s a particular risk of the secret club effect during product discovery work. When the product trio work in isolation, it creates a disconnect with the broader team, leading to handoffs that fall flat, misalignment, and poor communication. If the rest of the team doesn’t feel involved from the start, they’re less likely to rally behind the product vision. Heck, if they’re that isolated, they might not even be confident about what the product vision is.

The solution: 

Product discovery doesn’t have to be a closed-door meeting. Involve the rest of the product team as much as possible, tapping into their skills and interests. You could even set up a dedicated Slack or Teams channel for the “Product Trio,” open to the whole team, where discussions are transparent and inclusive. This keeps everyone on the same page and invested in the product’s success from the get-go. The product trio should sit within the whole Product Team, and not become its own separate entity. 

3. Role confusion

Remember what we said about having strictly defined roles? Well, turns out there’s some nuance to that. Although you don’t want to create a rigid environment where there’s no overlap or accountability for tasks outside of a team member’s remit, you don’t want to do a complete 180 turn and be too fluid. 

When roles overlap or responsibilities aren’t clearly defined, things can get messy – fast. If, say, the Product Manager starts making design decisions without consulting the Designer, it can erode trust and stifle collaboration. You don’t want to be stepping on other people’s toes.

The solution: 

Clarity is key! Clearly define each trio member’s role while encouraging open dialogue. Everyone should feel empowered to leverage their expertise and challenge each other’s perspectives in a constructive way. 

By maintaining a healthy balance of authority and collaboration, the product trio can avoid stepping on each other’s toes and keep the focus on building an awesome product. You don’t want to be rigid like a stone in your roles, nor do you want to be completely fluid like water. The sweet spot is being a nice, wobbly jelly where there’s some flexibility. 

4. Lack of shared vision

If the trio isn’t aligned on the product vision, things can go off the rails quickly. One person might prioritize features based on market trends, while another is all about aesthetics. You need to have a unified direction or a North Star leading the way, kind of like the Three Wise Men. Without it, you’ll become directionless and the product risks feeling disjointed and missing the mark.

The solution: 

Regularly revisit and refine the product vision as a team. Make sure it’s a shared goal that everyone not only understands but actively supports. Everyone in the product trio needs to live and die by the vision. It’s the why to everything you do. Alignment is key to making informed, cohesive decisions that drive the product forward in a meaningful way. Here are some great product vision examples to inspire you.

5. Ignoring user feedback

No matter how well the trio works together, ignoring user feedback is a surefire way to build a product that doesn’t meet user needs. If the team gets too wrapped up in internal discussions or preconceived ideas, they can easily miss out on game-changing insights from real users.

The solution: 

Keep your users front and center by making customer feedback a non-negotiable part of the decision-making process. Prioritize user testing throughout development, and let those insights guide design and feature choices. Remember, the best products are built with users, not just for them.

5. Overemphasis on process

Processes are great for keeping things on track, but when the trio sticks too rigidly to them, creativity and innovation can take a hit. Sticking to the playbook when the situation calls for a pivot can limit the team’s ability to respond to new insights or opportunities.

The solution: 

Flexibility is your friend! Encourage a culture where the trio can adapt and change gears based on new information. Being open to experimentation and shaking up processes can lead to innovative solutions and a product that’s always evolving, just like your users.

The rule of threes 

In the world of product development, the magic of three shines brightly through the product trio. By integrating the unique strengths of the Product Manager, Designer, and Engineer, teams can foster collaboration, enhance alignment, and speed up the development process. This trifecta empowers each role to contribute to a shared vision while remaining aware of the broader implications of their work.

The product trio isn’t just a structure to follow; it’s a mindset that encourages cross-functional teamwork and a user-centered approach. As you consider implementing this model, remember that maintaining open communication and flexibility is key to avoiding common pitfalls. Embrace the power of collaboration and let the product trio be your guide in creating exceptional products that meet both user needs and business goals.

The product trio allows you to create a better product. ProdPad helps with that too. Our tool gives you the functionality you need to become a better Product Manager. Why not give it a try yourself to see what we’re talking about?