[VelkaMorava]

I got the same feelings. From the article:

> January 29, early: there's this team that nominally owns dashboards, and they got wind of us wanting a dashboard. They want to be the ones to do it, so we meet with them to convey the request.

> January 29, late: asked "dashboard team" manager if they had been able to get the network stuff talking to our server yet via chat. No reply.

Am I the only one to think this is completely unreasoanble to message the other team later that day? I mean it's not as if I am sitting and dangling my legs waiting for a Karen to come, drop everything I do and do her dashboard. They might have had stuff planned for weeks/months in advance...

[alistairSH]

Yup. I pretty much stopped caring at that point. My backlog is 6+ months long. If you need me to drop something and pick up a new project, it’ll need the blessing of product management and, depending on size/LOE, also approval from my VP or SVP.

PM will adjust when appropriate; they do care. But, I can’t just build every little thing an internal customer wants because I have revenue-producing/cost-saving updates to build and deploy. Make your case that this lost+button saves more money than something else on my backlog, and we’ll probably squeeze it in.

This is a mid-sized enterprise software company and I manage one of our SRE teams.

[sokoloff]

If your backlog is six-plus months long, do you simultaneously go out and “want to be the ones to do it”?

I have no problem with another team being too busy to take on work in my area, provided they don’t actively try to take on work in my area and then pocket veto it.

[Jare]

This is the real core of the issue. There's always a chance that some software project, small or large, will progress massively slow for 1000 reasons. But the dysfunction with turf wars and actively blocking solutions is really serious, and common in large or growing companies.

[Tempest1981]

Possibly fear that "asking team" builds the dashboard themselves, in a custom way, then asks the "dashboard team" to maintain it.

Although that might still be a time-saver for the backlogged "dashboard team".

[cutemonster]

I think they (the dashboard team) were worried that if other teams started building their own dashboard, that'd indicate that the dashboard team wasn't that useful. Which could mean they would get fewer promotions or raises, or might even get fired if bad days came. -- So they wanted ownership of all dashboards, whilst actually building them, was less important. (Is my interpretation.)

The new dashboard team manager, who appeared in the end, seemed to be a bit more "get something done" minded though

[alistairSH]

No of course not, but this person was complaining they didn’t start work the same day the request was made. That’s completely unreasonable.

[Zababa]

In that case, shouldn't you reply with "my backlog is currently X weeks/month long, we'll probably get started around Y, I'll keep you updated" instead of saying nothing? Since the team wanted to do it and didn't mention that they had to do something before in the meeting, you can assume that they will get started on it right away. If not, at least tell it to the other team so they can explore their options.

[Jensson]

If you go to another team and tell them to drop a project because you will do it for them then it is fair for them to assume that you will start working on it very soon. If you don't have the time to do a project then don't tell people they must let you do it.