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by mjw1007
2664 days ago
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One place where this can fall down is when the cost is along the lines of "if we do X then we're closing down the option of doing Y" later. Unless the business/management/client is better than average, there's a large risk that they'll say "fine, whatever, we want X", then a year later ask for Y and be unhappy that it's impossible or very expensive. |
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"A cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."
Marketing / sales / bd / etc do not understand most of the variables engineering is working theough. They can be big: impacting price to build/extend and when it starts being a profit center! The tricky bit is those depts also have their own tracked variables that need to be rolled into the decision. Non-engineering variables can also be critical: E.g., going to market before others, hitting some top account or partner, growing revenue by x% compounding now and using that to pay for tech debt, or even learning the workaround isn't worth improving from the customer's/market's perspective.
The humbling thing is no one has all the info, from engineering and product to sales and marketing to the execs. That is where your job comes in. So communicating opportunities at the level of time/cost/growth within engineering's field of view, and making this a non-unilateral discussion. (And if you are good, invisibly sneaking in color around all your other operational glue: who is doing well, what new ideas came in, etc.)