| April 3, 2025
In high-growth environments, it’s easy for engineering teams to get pulled in too many directions. Feature requests. Integrations. “Quick wins.” All with good intentions—but often, bad timing.
As a leader, saying no is one of your most important jobs.
Here’s how to do it without alienating stakeholders:
- Push decisions back to priorities. If you’ve already aligned on roadmap goals, use them as a filter. It’s not “no forever”—it’s “not now because.”
- Offer tradeoffs. “We can do this, but it means delaying X.” Make opportunity cost visible.
- Be transparent. Explain how overcommitting damages delivery and morale.
Your engineers don’t need you to build the roadmap. They need you to protect it.
