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35 XP

Lesson 6 · 8 min

The AI PM-engineer-designer working agreement

Three roles, overlapping concerns, predictable friction. The working agreement that prevents AI features from getting stuck in 'who owns this?' debates.

Who owns what

  • PM owns: the eval set definition, success-metric thresholds, refusal/escalation UX intent, cost envelope, lifecycle review schedule.
  • Engineering owns: the implementation (model choice, prompt, retrieval, tools), eval-set runner, cost regressions in CI, observability dashboards, on-call playbook.
  • Designer owns: the refusal/error/citation UX, the streaming-response pattern, the user-control affordances (regenerate, edit, undo), the disclosure of AI involvement.

What tends to fall between the cracks: the eval-set authoring (everyone thinks the other owns it). Solution: PM owns the criteria; engineering builds the runner; both meet to label the cases together. One afternoon. Usually skipped.