Can you describe a situation in which you had to prioritize the needs of the business over the needs of the team, and how you approached it?

Question

Anonymous · Accepted Answer

I was managing the program for a core API service that ingested customer data.

Priority A (Growth): The Product team required us to launch a major new feature,
'Real-time Analytics Dashboard', within the next quarter (Q3) to meet a key
revenue target. This feature relied on new endpoints and transformations in our
core API

Priority B (Reliability): Simultaneously, the Engineering team flagged that the
core data ingestion service was nearing its technical capacity limit. It was
built on older architecture and required a complete refactor/migration to a
scalable microservice architecture to prevent critical outages, a project
estimated to take the entire Q3.

I presented the stakeholders (Product, Engineering VP, Sales) with the clear
trade-off

We agreed on a balanced approach:

* Phase 1 (6 weeks): Prioritize and complete the core refactor of the ingestion
   path first. This was essential to stability and scalability.

* Phase 2 (6 weeks): De-scope the 'Real-time Analytics Dashboard' to an
   'Hourly-Refresh Dashboard' (Minimum Viable Product/MVP). This significantly
   reduced the engineering work on the new endpoints, making it achievable in
   the remaining time, and still delivered 70% of the intended business value
   (analytics capability).

I held weekly syncs to report on the Refactor progress and the adjusted Feature
delivery date/scope. This ensured all teams (including Sales, who had to adjust
their pitch) were aligned with the revised plan.

Anonymous · Answer

Competing priorities come up regularly. The best approach I find is to be open
and communicative about such situations with your leadership as well as your
stake holders. We recently had a lay-off at XYZ which impacted our team. At the
same time, there were new strategic initiatives kicking off. This meant less
people, more work. My team of 4 became a team of 3 and we were brought in to
support new projects. My team was excited to be part of new strategies taking
shape but also had the burden of maintaining old projects. I wanted to give my
team the opportunity to work on the new projects which were exciting but also
prevent burn-out. I firstly talked to my leadership highlighting the volume of
tasks and the unrealistic expectation on each person. My leadership was in
agreement that some work had to be de-prioritized and asked me to come up with a
proposal. Next I talked to my stakeholders for old and new tasks. When
explaining the high load on my team, some of the old tasks were voluntarily
de-prioritized by my business teams as they were also considering going a new
direction and didn't necessarily need  to maintain old solutions. Similarly some
of the new projects could be time staggered to give my team time to close one
and then take up another. What I learnt is honestly explaining the reasons why
work might have to be delayed and still showing a genuine interest in
collaborating helps get buy in and support from the otherwise demanding
stakeholders. In this way, I was able to keep my stakeholders and my team happy
and balanced.

Anonymous · Answer

I had an attrition one day and  the team was not short on staff. We didn't have
enough engineering resources to handle all the projects that were on the roadmap
with the attrition so we had to re-prioritize projects. I first double checked
on the impact/engineering weeks/and deadline of each project. I discovered one
project that we were planning deliver by end of the quarter but the stakeholder
originally told us they needed by end of the next quarter. I talked to the
stakeholder to see whether they are okay with us delivering the project by the
end of the next quarter. They said they are still fine with us delivering by the
end of the next quarter and we were able to reprioritize projects without
disrupting any of our stakeholders.

Anonymous · Answer

There was a situation when I had to prepare two different payment systems ready
for next month while I was working in company1. I divided the team in two
section and run like a different teams. I designed the architecture for both and
got reviewed with my manager and at every step I monitored and reviewed
progress. I wanted to finish couple of days early just incase something comes up
and done so. Everybody was happy and grateful to my effort to take multiple
responsibilities at once.

Can you describe a situation in which you had to prioritize the needs of the business over the needs of the team, and how you approached it?

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