Sure, it's fundamentally a business problem. But it's very hard to do product planning when you need to take into account global priorities for the platform team. Plus, you need to spend time to even estimate the cost of Feature A and Feature B, so you actually end up with several rounds of discussions where you first prioritise spending time on the estimation, then the feature itself etc. Not to mention, if this is a deep platform feature, it's probably only a prerequisite for an actual customer facing-feature that requires additional work, which gets delayed by all the estimation work and so on.
Additionally, this overall means that no one can plan in advance any features that depend on the platform, since global business priorities are constantly shifting.
Not to mention the political angle, where more adept business leaders can always push through their pet platform features to the detriment of what are more obvious business goals. Or at least, it will always seem this way to teams whose requirements keep falling through the cracks.
If product A is my breadwinner, i might not even need product B to estimate workload impacts for their feature request because my business strategy might be such that i’ll be allocating the resources based on business priority of product A.
Trying to second guess this by making tech a black hole with no levers to pull by the business is fundamentally unsound.
>> where more adept business leaders can always push through their … Or at least, it will always seem this way
I mean i think you’re calling out the solution with the problem. Just strive to be a better operator, level up to their ability. Exceedingly hard to do but overall win for everyone.
If you're the person in charge of planning product A's road map, you do need to take into account platform schedules, and those do depend on every other product that uses the platform.
And of course the choice is sometimes simple, but it's often not. It's often the case that both Product A and Product B are breadwinners. One might need a feature that can bring $1M in revenue, and take between 3-4 months, and another might have a feature that should bring in $200k in revenue, but take 0.5-1 month. Which do you prioritize? What if both must be done by some date, but for one there is a chance to push a customer to accept a later date, but it's not sure yet? What happens when it later turns out that the estimation was overly optimistic and it will take twice as long?
> Just strive to be a better operator, level up to their ability. Exceedingly hard to do but overall win for everyone.
Politics in an org is a 0-sum game. If I win, someone else loses, and then their team is going to be the one that feels frustrated, and we're back to square one.
Additionally, this overall means that no one can plan in advance any features that depend on the platform, since global business priorities are constantly shifting.
Not to mention the political angle, where more adept business leaders can always push through their pet platform features to the detriment of what are more obvious business goals. Or at least, it will always seem this way to teams whose requirements keep falling through the cracks.