HACKER Q&A
📣 amortize

How do you navigate prioritization in mature software teams?


As a new senior software engineer to a team, I find it very frustrating to push for newer projects to be prioritised in the team's backlog. I often find that resistance comes in two forms: 1) This has been tried before, and need not be attempted (à la "historian's fallacy") 2) This is too strategic, and changes systems which are working fine today. We should look for low-hanging fruits.

How do you deal with this?

  👤 EpicEng Accepted Answer ✓
I'm going to go ahead and assume your teammates are reasonable people. If they're not then it doesn't matter what you do.

It sounds like you're not convincing anyone of the value of your proposals. You want to do something they've tried before, and presumably it failed. Why is it different this time around? Why are your ideas better? How will this align with the long term goals of the company?

Likewise, you want to make large changes to existing systems. Why aren't you able to convince them that this is the right way to spend your resources?

If you can't get people behind you you're going to have a hard time in your career. People are going to disagree with you all of the time. Learn how to sway them to your side. It may make sense to you, but for whatever reason, it doesn't to them. So what are they looking for? What are their concerns? What might they know that you do not, or what do you know that they don't?

Ask them questions. Why didn't this work the last time around? What is our mandate as an engineering organization? What issues do you foresee in doing this? They may make your point for you in their answers, or you may realize that your idea isn't fully fledged.

👤 vmurthy
One of the things that might help you is this: Understand why the resistance is. It may be true that things are working today but if your suggestion means that you only make it better/faster/whatever in support of whatever your team’s strategic objectives are , it might win you your team-mates’ confidence. As a new member in your team, there might be people who view your ideas with skepticism and it’s natural until you can show that you’re only suggesting things that will make life easier for them
👤 gtirloni
My instinct is to go to numbers/metrics and try to show it objectively first. Can you show things will be faster, use less resources, etc? Your idea should stand on its own.

Sometimes timing has to be right too. If the team is swamped with work and your idea is a variation of something that didn't work in the past (even if you think it'll work this time), maybe it's better to save it for later. But if it had a direct impact on the drowning, double down on it. Collect more data, convince more people, etc.