How to effectively negotiate with other teams?

Question

As I pick up larger projects that require driving alignment across more and more teams, I’d like to understand any tips or advice on effectively driving alignment with those teams and being able to drive those outcomes faster. One recent example is that a partner team came back to us days before the launch of a feature pushing back on one of the core functionalities of the product. While they were consulted earlier in the project planning process and did not have pushback then, what is the best way to make a strong case to push forward while avoiding too much back and forth?

Alex Chiou · Accepted Answer

This is a very broad topic, but I would start off with these 2 courses:

For your particular scenario (and many, many others), the cure is constant communication. This is especially true given that you work at Meta where over-communication is the glue that is furiously working overtime to keep the engineering org and culture together.

Just because a team gave you alignment in the past doesn't mean they'll continue giving you alignment in the future. As a senior engineer and tech lead, it is your responsibility to check in on them regularly (at least once a week) and continue building the relationship so they are less inclined to rug pull you.

There's also a social reading component to it. It's possible that a team will say in a meeting that they're aligned, but there's a slight hesitation in their voice and/or body language. As an E5, you should be adept at picking up these small cues and noting down that this alignment is risky and not stable. The action item from there is to check in on that partner more aggressively so that if they end up flaking out, you can catch it ASAP.

How to effectively negotiate with other teams?

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