I think the article shows correctly the common problems at most organizations today. Many organizations don't have engineers who really care about usability over functionality, so simply "handing off high level wants" just doesn't work outside of a couple of rehabbed buildings in Frisco.
It's easy to have a reference to the Stripe article, where there are no PMs. But, this environment is the exception rather than the rule. After working in a few medium sized places, the ratio of engineers who place an equal level of detail on usability & functionality vs those that place a higher value on functionality/architecture is easily 1:6. And you can guess which ones are usually the Sr members. To their line of thinking, usability isn't something they have ever had to worry about.
I do agree with a previous poster that this is something that the startup culture is starting to change, but I would bet that this change won't be visible at most organizations until at least 5 - 8 years out as the engineer talent changes.
Now, I would say this problem is something that can be changed with some UX standards. The PM creates flowcharts and/or wireframes of the proposed solution > hands it over to the agile team > dev + ux discuss any flows that fall outside of established standards. As a PM myself, I would love this. To be required to only provide more end user/market requirements as needed would be ideal.
One issue with this is that usually with organizations that have these issues, the investment just isn't there in the area of UX (I sit here reflecting on my current situation).
I will bet that the product team disfunction mentioned in the article is directly reflected in said team's products. :)
It's easy to have a reference to the Stripe article, where there are no PMs. But, this environment is the exception rather than the rule. After working in a few medium sized places, the ratio of engineers who place an equal level of detail on usability & functionality vs those that place a higher value on functionality/architecture is easily 1:6. And you can guess which ones are usually the Sr members. To their line of thinking, usability isn't something they have ever had to worry about.
I do agree with a previous poster that this is something that the startup culture is starting to change, but I would bet that this change won't be visible at most organizations until at least 5 - 8 years out as the engineer talent changes.
Now, I would say this problem is something that can be changed with some UX standards. The PM creates flowcharts and/or wireframes of the proposed solution > hands it over to the agile team > dev + ux discuss any flows that fall outside of established standards. As a PM myself, I would love this. To be required to only provide more end user/market requirements as needed would be ideal.
One issue with this is that usually with organizations that have these issues, the investment just isn't there in the area of UX (I sit here reflecting on my current situation).
I will bet that the product team disfunction mentioned in the article is directly reflected in said team's products. :)