Ask HN: Stuck between stubborn PM and stubborn external team
4 comments
It is not your role to move this forward. This is part of a large struggle for control between different parts of your org. In a good org this would bubble to leadership and get decided in a poor org blamed gets passed so do what you can to avoid being labelled as the cog.
The pm is doing a poor job here. This person needs to meet with the boss of services and let them know the priority and buyin of the project at the leadership level and let them purpose a solution (like a new service)
The pm is doing a poor job here. This person needs to meet with the boss of services and let them know the priority and buyin of the project at the leadership level and let them purpose a solution (like a new service)
Thanks for the reply. I'm kinda naive and your reply has me realizing... all parties have been positioning themselves to be free of blame... except me. That needs to be my focus now.
If it’s a nontechnical problem then it’s a political problem. Make friends with the shot callers on one side or the other and convince them to capitulate.
The alternative is to make friends with a senior leader and explain the situation to them.
The alternative is to make friends with a senior leader and explain the situation to them.
I just started as a Senior Developer at a new company (you've heard of them). I'm part of a new project consisting of a dozen teams. My one job is to implement a small REST API. Product & management made it a requirement for me to add this new API to an existing back-end service owned by an external team; customers complained they didn't want to integrate with yet another new service.
However, the team that owns this back-end service won't accept my change. They aren't blocking a PR even. Just off the spec, this team decided the API doesn't fit the responsibility of their service. I want to stay anon so let's say their service makes Pizza & I'm supposed to add Spaghetti. Blasphemy to a pizza chef but to our customers, it's all just Italian food.
I understand both sides tbh but I've zero decision making power in my role to unblock this. All I can do is facilitate meetings between PM and the rejecting team but sadly these calls never go anywhere. It's been 3 months of this now. Product/management insist on their vision, this team insists on theirs.
Any advice on how I could move this forward? Am I doing something obviously wrong here?