Design · Core
Check feasibility and cost with engineering
Before committing, check with engineers that the design can be built with the time, skills and technology you have, and roughly what it will cost. Finding out late is far more expensive.
About 2-5 daysEvergreenLast reviewed 5 November 2026
Who this applies to
- Skills it builds
- Technical and AI fluencyDesign and user experience
- PM types
- All
- Product types
- All
- Starting points
- All
- Ways of working
- All
- Experience
- All
- Size of organisation
- All
Steps, by experience
Beginner (under 1 year)
- Walk the engineers through the tested design and the problem it solves.
- Ask what is straightforward, what is hard and what is unknown.
- For anything unknown, agree a short technical test, often called a spike, to find out.
- Ask for a rough size for each part of the design, such as small, medium or large.
- Discuss simpler versions of the hardest parts that would still meet the user need.
- Write down the risks, dependencies and rough effort, and update the design if needed.
Intermediate (1 to 4 years)
- Review the design with engineering and identify complexity and unknowns.
- Run time-boxed spikes for the biggest technical risks.
- Get rough sizes and explore simpler alternatives for costly parts.
- Record risks, dependencies and estimates.
Experienced (5+ years)
- Include architecture, security, data, scalability and running costs, not just build effort.
- Use feasibility prototypes for genuinely new technology, and treat them as discovery.
- Make cost and value trade-offs explicit with the team rather than negotiating estimates down.
- Check fit with the technical strategy and platform roadmap.
Who can do this
Owner: Product manager
Can be delegated to
- Tech Lead or Architect: Lead the review and give rough sizes
- Backend Engineer or Full-stack Engineer: Run a spike on the riskiest technical unknown
- DevOps / SRE: Estimate hosting, running and support costs
Reviewed by: Architect, UX Designer
Tool examples
- Figma
- Walk engineers through the prototype and let them leave comments on parts they are unsure about.
- Jira
- Create spike tickets with a time box and a clear question to answer.
- GitHub
- Keep spike code in a separate branch so it is clearly throwaway.
- AWS
- Use the pricing calculator to estimate running costs for the main services.
- Azure
- Use the pricing calculator to estimate running costs for the main services.
- Google Cloud
- Use the pricing calculator to estimate running costs for the main services.
Definition of done
- Design reviewed with engineering
- Biggest technical unknowns tested with spikes
- Rough sizes, risks and dependencies recorded
- Design updated where needed
Common pitfalls
- Asking engineers for exact dates at this stage
- Forgetting running and support costs
- Ignoring a simpler option that meets the same need
If you lead the team
What good looks like: Engineers shape the solution early, so cost and risk are known before commitment.
Ask your PM
- What did engineering flag as risky or expensive?
- How confident are we in the estimate?
Warning signs
- Engineers first see the design at hand-off.
- Surprises in build are common.