Splitting scarce engineering capacity across competing projects: a prioritization story

Describe a time when several projects were competing for the same limited engineering capacity. How did you decide which work got the engineers, and what happened as a result? ```hint Show the rule, not just the call Choose a case where each side had a fair claim to the engineers, and be ready to explain the criteria and evidence that settled it, and what you did about the work that lost. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Should the story be about splitting engineers between projects you owned, or about competing with other teams' requests for a shared engineering group? - Does the interviewer want one specific allocation decision, or how you ran prioritization as a recurring process, such as each planning cycle? - Is a story acceptable where the allocation later proved wrong, if I can explain what I changed afterwards? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A situation with real scarcity: the competing projects, who wanted each, and the engineering capacity actually available - An explicit prioritization method grounded in customer impact, business value, effort, risk and dependencies, with the data used - How the candidate aligned engineering leads and stakeholders, including disagreement and the owners of the projects that lost - What was delivered and measured, and what happened to the deprioritized work - Reflection on what the candidate would do differently and how the approach was reused ### Follow-up Questions - A senior stakeholder whose project you deprioritized escalates to your manager. What do you do? - How were the engineering estimates produced, and what did you do when one turned out to be wrong? - Knowing how things turned out, would you make the same allocation again?