I am biased not only because the author has an immense influence on my product thinking, she is also my life partner. I still think you should read this article on creating and using ad-hoc games for solving the complex problems we encounter while working on software and creating products.
Being a product engineer, I often say to teams that building software is the easy part of our job. The hardest part is setting your team up for success so that you build the right thing the first time around.
No wonder one of the points that resonate with me is the description of the unique value a product designer in cross-functional teams brings to the table. Remember, I am biased, but this is something that the tech industry often gets wrong.
My job by the day is designer. Product designer to be more precise. A way of describing it when I speak with strangers is “I design apps, that thing on your phone”. Well, it’s a lie. I don’t. I mean, yes I do design apps and tools but actually, if you interact with what I contributed to produce someday, what you see on your phone or your computer is just the by-product of my real work. My real job, or at least 90% of it, is about helping my team take and prioritise decisions so that we build something that matters to our users and we keep iterating on it before we go bankrupt.
Give it a read: Methodology of the Parallel Universes: on The Creation And Usage of Games For Solving Complex Problems