hardScenarioBehaviouralMidSeniorStaffLead
Two engineering teams in your program each insist their work has to come first, and both leads have dug in. You have no authority over either. How do you get to a decision?
5 min readUpdated 2026-08-15
Answer
Short answer
Convert a priority argument into a sequencing question with a stated cost, because two teams can both be right about importance while only one ordering is cheaper. Find the shared constraint, price each ordering against it, then take the residual disagreement to the one person who owns both.
The practical prioritisation test is whether the two teams disagree which work comes answer gives the interviewer something concrete to challenge.
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Likely follow-ups
- One lead agrees in the room and then keeps working the original order anyway. What do you do the second week you notice it?
- How do you tell the difference between a genuine technical dependency and a lead using dependency language to protect their roadmap?
- Suppose the two teams report into different VPs who are themselves in disagreement. Where does the decision go?
- What record do you keep of a sequencing decision like this, and who do you make sure sees it?
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