mediumScenarioBehaviouralSeniorStaffLead
You've run a threat model and found real issues, but engineering leadership says the roadmap has no room this quarter. How do you get the fixes prioritised?
Translate each finding from security language into the same terms the roadmap is already prioritised by — a concrete failure scenario, its business cost, and the cheapest point in the system's lifecycle to fix it — rather than asking for time on the strength of the threat model alone.
3 min readUpdated 2026-08-15
Answer
Short answer
To get engineering buy-in for threat-modeling findings, translate each issue into a concrete failure scenario, business impact, exploitability, blast radius, and cost of delay. Push urgent fixes now, schedule lower-risk items with owners and dates, and make accepted residual risk explicit instead of letting it disappear from the roadmap.
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Likely follow-ups
- What would you say if leadership formally accepts the risk and you disagree with the decision?
- How do you avoid a threat-modeling exercise turning into a list nobody ever looks at again?
- How would this conversation differ if the finding were a regulatory requirement rather than a security best practice?
- What is the smallest fix you'd insist on landing this quarter even with no roadmap room?
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