Agile best practices for product and engineering teams (plus templates for collaboration)
Last updated: January 2025
20 years goes by fast. Since the original Agile Manifesto was published in 2001, agile software development has grown to become the de facto work style for most technology companies. Even if your organization does not follow a specific agile framework, you likely incorporate agile principles into your approach to building software.
No matter how "agile" you really are, product management and engineering are sure to be at the center of your efforts. These teams work closely together to define, prioritize, and build new value for customers — coming together on key agile practices such as sprint planning and agile retrospectives. This cross-functional collaboration is essential to driving the iterative development and continuous improvement agile calls for.
Align engineering with product — try Aha! software.
But this level of teamwork is not a given. It is never easy to establish (or sustain) a harmonious partnership between product and engineering. Conflicting opinions, communication gaps, and out-of-sync workflows often get in the way. If this sounds familiar, or if you are revving up for an agile transformation and want to set yourself up for success, the agile best practices in this guide can help you bring product and engineering together effectively.
Read on or jump ahead here:
What are the benefits of following an agile approach?
Spotify. Amazon. Microsoft. Many of the world's leading technology companies embrace agile ways of working. This is no coincidence — the main benefit of agile is greater competitive advantage. The premise is that you can become more productive, deliver more value, and better satisfy customers by empowering teams to work incrementally. Customers are included in the product development lifecycle, too, as continuous delivery means quicker integration of user feedback and ideas. For example, a suggested improvement might make it into the next sprint and be shipped within days or weeks.
In addition, other benefits that come with following an agile approach include:
Increased visibility: Work is made visual. Literally. Whether your team practices kanban or follows scrum methodology, most agile frameworks involve visualizing work at all stages of development. This kind of transparency increases accountability across the organization, making it possible to spot roadblocks and pivot as needed.
Adaptability to change: Change is a constant, and a welcome one. Because agile teams complete work in small chunks, they are better able to respond to evolving requirements, shifting business landscapes, or emergent competitors.
Reduced financial risk: Agile encourages delivering value as quickly as possible and then improving iteratively based upon feedback. The priority is to build what will be lovable to customers — not to invest in solving for every use case, as you might do in traditional project management.
More motivated employees: Motivation is critical to productivity. Agile prioritizes self-organizing teams where people collaborate, learn, and build together. This way of working engages teammates and might even reduce attrition over time.
Any successful agile approach hinges on a well-implemented strategy. When product plans sync with business goals, an agile workflow can enable organizations to achieve their best and delight customers in the process. This is a major reason why effective collaboration between agile product management and engineering teams is important: Faster delivery and strategic alignment hinges on their ability to work well together.
Related:
How do agile product and engineering teams work together?
Cross-functional collaboration between product management and engineering is core to product development. From defining features to shaping the roadmap, it takes input from both functions to align on what matters most.
On a high level, product managers often lead the "why" and "what" behind product decisions (i.e., which features to pursue based on customer research and business strategy). Engineers typically focus on the "how" (i.e., the technical considerations behind building these enhancements). Both perspectives are key to creating the most value for customers — ideally for the least amount of effort.
Related:
Agile introduces specific rules, workflows, and ceremonies to the product development process, most notably in the "build" stage. This is when product and engineering come together to closely review and plan the details of upcoming development work.
Some organizations follow agile frameworks religiously, whereas others cherry-pick things to practice. Let's briefly go over some common instances where agile product management and engineering teams intersect and how:
(If you are not familiar with any of the terms in the table below, check out our agile dictionary.)
Agile practice | Product management's role | Engineering's role |
Share updates on priorities and new stakeholder insights | Share updates on technical progress and capacity constraints | |
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
Discuss results of the concluded sprint and define action items to improve in the next one | Discuss results of the concluded sprint and define action items to improve in the next one |
A representation of how work flows between product and engineering backlogs.
If your team subscribes to scrum or a highly prescriptive agile methodology such as the Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe®), there might be additional events and activities (PI planning, for example) that involve product and engineering. But no matter if you are a dedicated practitioner of agile methods or are simply "agile-ish," the best practices in the next section can apply to you.
Related:
10 agile best practices for product and engineering teams
Whether your organization is just embarking on an agile transformation or you are striving to improve existing workflows and relationships, it can be helpful to learn agile best practices. That means going beyond the tactical (such as managing dependencies, assigning tasks, choosing an agile workflow software, etc.) and seeking expert advice to get the most out of your agile approach.
Below are actionable tips for implementing agile workflows, better collaboration between product management and engineering in an agile environment, and more streamlined ways to track progress. Just remember to take everything as general guidance. Evaluate it all through the lens of your own situation and adjust as needed.
Best practices for implementing agile
1. Organize teams with intention
There is a direct correlation between how you organize teams and their effectiveness. Agile teams are comprised of many cross-functional stakeholders, often with dedicated product managers or product owners, scrum masters, and developers. But before you jump to assigning roles, evaluate how teams currently perform and see if you can spot groups that are already working at full potential. Then, organize projects around motivated individuals with a proven history of achievement.
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2. Nurture new ways of thinking
Remember that newly formed teams will take time to gel, and implementing agile takes an ongoing commitment to learning. You might find that some patterns of behavior need to be unlearned as well. Seek opportunities to refine processes and skills together. If you choose to provide agile training, be sure to give everyone the same training regardless of their tenure at the company or overall career experience. You want everyone operating from the same playbook.
3. Document for transparency
Rules, events, processes — do not assume everyone understands (or will remember) all of the agile practices you intend to implement. Document and share everything with the team so people stay informed and, more importantly, aligned on what you want to achieve. You might even create a charter that captures agile roles and responsibilities across product and engineering.
Best practices for agile team collaboration
4. Set communication guidelines
Productivity is directly impacted by how the team communicates. If you are following an established agile framework such as scrum methodology, there will be defined touchpoints for conveying priorities and making decisions. If you are choosing a more generalized agile approach, you will need to define communication guidelines on your own. Consider a regular cadence for face-to-face meetings versus when and how to collaborate asynchronously.
5. Focus on the customer
Building software is about solving problems for people. Yet it can be tempting to go insular — this is especially true if developers have been able to focus on one area of the product in relative isolation.
But truly lovable products are the result of a holistic view of the customer experience. These folks use your entire product, not just one feature. So even if your product is complex enough to have many subteams focused on specific aspects, you want to encourage collaboration with the customer as much as possible. Both teams can contribute here: Product managers might share findings from customer interviews and ideas, and engineers can speak to support tickets and product usage. Completing exercises such as user story mapping can help you synthesize it all.
Related:
6. Invest in team building
Teamwork is the secret ingredient to effective agile development. Communicating freely and sharing creative ideas requires trust — you have to earn it.
Working together daily is not enough. Team building might seem like a distraction when you have lots to do, but the reward will bear out the longer that the group works together. Carve out time for connection unrelated to the job. When people feel connected, they will be more accountable to one another, better able to give meaningful feedback on how to improve, and invested in the success of whatever they are working on together.
7. Reflect on effectiveness
Reflection and continuous improvement are core tenets of agile. You will want to establish a consistent forum for reviewing the team’s effectiveness, formulating hypotheses, and evaluating outcomes. Make changes based on the data related to the problem, not individual opinions. This makes it possible to be more objective when measuring improvements and avoid blaming or shaming people. Even better, you can fix issues in real time.
Most teams accomplish this via regularly scheduled agile retrospective meetings. Make sure product management joins these sessions alongside engineering. That way, you can all consider areas for improvement beyond sprint planning and performance (such as the broader product development process and overall relationship between teams).
Best practices for managing agile workflows and tracking progress
8. Support flexibility and creativity
Agile software development requires clear requirements and well-defined processes. But not everything has to be so meticulous. For activities such as sprint planning and daily standup meetings, try using a digital whiteboard. Many agile teams use whiteboard software as a collaborative visual space to come together quickly on ideas and plans.
Using colorful shapes and sticky notes, emoji votes, and voting tools makes for a more delightful agile planning experience — helping (if in a small way) to build relationships and break down barriers to free-flowing communication between product and engineering. (Plus, templates can give you a speed boost. Check out a few to try below.)
9. Connect environments
Product managers maintain the roadmap and product backlog. This feeds into engineering's sprint backlog and workflow tools (such as kanban boards). Ideally, work should move straight from one team to the next. But this handoff is not always as smooth as it could be, especially if you are working in disjointed software environments.
It is worth considering tools that can help you send work seamlessly from product to engineering and increase visibility into progress. This could look like an integrated backlog or automated status updates.
An example of a unified product and engineering backlog built in Aha! Roadmaps, connected to Aha! Develop
10. Measure collective success
Velocity, cycle time, burndown — classic agile metrics like these can help you understand how efficiently you are delivering work and completing sprint goals. But this only illustrates one view of agile success.
Find ways to measure the work product and engineering do together. For example, if you use a scorecard to help prioritize features, you can view product value and value delivered reports in Aha! software. This provides a more holistic view of both teams' ability to deliver real solutions to customers.
See how product and engineering contribute to product value with this report in Aha! software.
Of course, even on the highest-achieving product and engineering teams, problems will still occur. You are dealing with a variety of unpredictable elements: working with other human beings, developing new technology, and anticipating customer expectations. Agile merely gives you the flexibility to react, respond, and evolve. It is up to you to make sound strategic decisions.
Templates for agile team collaboration
Check out our whiteboard templates for activities such as agile sprint planning and retrospectives, and start collaborating in a few clicks. You can also find a few templates for specific agile frameworks in our template library, including a scrum framework template and a bundle of SAFe-aligned PI planning templates.
Agile sprint planning template
Agile retrospective template
Kanban board template
User story mapping template
