How This Product Manager Turned Team Reluctance Into a Two-Week Deadline Victory

so in this scenario, um, it's related to, um, the, the project that I'm currently working on, which is the automation for the GA tool or the migration of teams to the GA tool. Um, so for this, um, they, the specific team, um, told us that they are not committed to this migration, and this migration is required, um, in or like by, by the June 30th date because we need to meet our deficiency findings from this, um, from the audit, from the financial audit the year before. Um, so because they told us that they Uh, are unable to meet this deadline. Um, we considered several alternatives.

They're not, they're not committed to meet the deadline. OK. OK, um, And so, um, For this, uh, we tried to Um, so we, we, we did some homework, understood the, the timeline that would take for them to implement this migration, um, whether or not they would need like how many, like give, give basically an estimate of if they had one developer, two developers working on it, how, how much time they would be able or like how How quickly they can, they can complete this mitigation and so we came up with a timeline of 2 weeks. So in 2 weeks they would be able, they would be able to complete their migration um for, for all of the services that they own. Um and just

Mhm. This was back in March. So in March we had told them, so this, this requirement to migrate had had come in January and um they came back to us in March and told us that it was not possible for them to meet the June 30th deadline. And so in um in March, once we had gotten their confirmation or Their, their refusal. Um, we did some homework, understood how much time it would take them 2 weeks to, to complete that. Um, they still said no, this is, this is like out of all of the other requests or the priorities that they have to take, it's not, it's not a priority that they can meet. And so, um, We want, uh, In order, since, since we had that, um, that refusal, um, it needed to be like at that point, it needed to, to be escalated to um Our leadership team and their leadership team, and so the The resolve for that, um, was that we would go in, like our team would go in with um our engineers to help them configure their or help them with the migration process, um, and, and, and help them reach the 6:30 date. So when that was resolved, um, We, we scheduled another follow-up to really understand what the team was like needed to do in order to, like, if they needed to do anything for us to begin the work to help them with the migration, and in that meeting, we actually found that um, There is a disconnect between their leadership and their own teams and their own teams like the engineering teams directly, or I guess our customers could have configured it, um, because they were missing one switch or 11 configuration to get to um fully migration, to, to get to a fully migrated state. Um, and so in the end, although we didn't, our team didn't have to do any of the configuration work, um, the, the result was that, um, It, it, it, it was the escalation that that led to, it was the escalation to senior leadership that um that prompted the, the further investigation into, into their um requirements to configure and that was when um their team came back to us and told us, you know, we can take care of this and we can move it forward. So That was the the results and the lessons learned. So,

Um, so I think Personally, I don't think it was possible because the reason is, um, I mentioned that this, this migration effort was part of a uh like a 6:30 date and these items, these requests to our uh customers are presented at the leadership level and also while that is done, um, like that while that discussion is ongoing, it is also, there's also a separate conversation at the like at the team level, at the service team level where, where the work is actually done. And so, Um, I guess this is another organizational, uh, thing where um the, it's common to hear that, you know, when we work directly with the, the engineering teams who, or the customers who develop it, they, they said, they, they say they're OK to, to work on it or it's an easy configuration, whereas the leadership might not have that same picture. Um, and so that's why I think it, like, even though we could have gotten the yes from the teams, if, if their leadership is telling them not to configure it, that, that's like that's the disconnect there that needs to be. Um, You know, like hammered out between them. So that's why I don't think Uh, we could have gone a separate way, but to have them talk to each other, and in order for them to talk to each other, we would have needed to escalate.

Yeah, uh. Uh hmm.

Yeah, um, I think I would start off by looping in, um, like So, We do have like what, what we as a learning to some of these experiences that we've had, um, With our customers, uh, our team implements weekly review meetings, so include all of the All of the teams that are, all our customers uh our customers that are um that are in scope for these initiatives and, and ask them to attend so that there is a common understanding from Like all levels of the team, of, of the customer's team to, to understand what the, what the project is about, what the requests are. Um, we send out communications like uh like via emails, um, So the problem with those is that they Typically are low attendance. Um, and And it's difficult to drive like clarity, like even if the clarity happens at one level, it doesn't like I guess go go upwards in some cases. Um, so I'd say although we tried the meeting. Meeting method. Um, perhaps there needs to be a discussion. Um, like for each, for each program that we run. Um, Ask a senior representative and like a perhaps someone from the, from the service team themselves or the customer team themselves to have a more Uh, detailed discussion on the work that is required between their teams. Um, and have us as the, I guess the The liaison or some sort of um pro provide some insights on like what the team actually has to do and have the Leadership present to help them understand that yes, this is something that your teams are telling us directly that they can do. Yeah, so, yeah, basically, instead of having like a large meeting with everyone involved, um, have specific targeted for each team. Meetings for each team.