Juan Gutiérrez Plaza

Speaker

Topic: Removing “and” in “Product and Engineering”.

Topic

Removing “and” in “Product and Engineering”.

Juan is delivering the talk together with speaker Martin Anvelt.

Topic Summary

Companies have traditionally structured Product and Engineering collaboration in one of two ways:

  • Separate leadership: A VP of Product and a VP of Engineering, each leading their own teams with different goals and metrics—often resulting in misalignment
  • Unified leadership: A single VP of Product Engineering overseeing both functions, but with the risk of bias depending on their background—either Product running Engineering or vice versa

We took a different path. Instead of choosing one extreme, we created a third way: two VPs, one organization, shared goals, collaborative balance and shared leadership. This model fosters healthy tension, deep collaboration, and a truly unified approach to building great products.

In this session, we’ll share why we took this approach, the risks we embraced, the steps we followed, and what we’ve learned after three years of making it work.

Bio

“I have worked as developer, agile coach, manager and in other roles in Spain, Finland, France and Estonia. Since the Three Wise Men brought me an Amstrad CPC462 when I was just a small child, I have been passionated about computers, programming and to find new and better ways of working. Currently I work as VP of Engineering at Scoro.”

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