Winning engineering buy-in for a direction you believe the team should take

How would you persuade the engineering team to commit to a direction you believe is the right one? ```hint Start with their side Before planning your argument, ask why the engineers might prefer another path, and whether they might be right. Your approach should depend on the answer. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Should I describe a general approach, walk through a real example from my experience, or both? - Is the path a product direction (what to build), a technical one (how to build it, such as an architecture or vendor choice), or a change to how the team works? - Have the engineers already pushed back, or have they simply not formed a view yet? - Who makes the final call here: me as the PM, the engineering lead, or the two of us together? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - Understanding the engineers' reasons and constraints before pushing, and recognizing which decisions engineering should own. - A case built on evidence engineers find credible, such as user data, prototypes, evaluation results or cost estimates, framed around goals the team shares. - Bringing engineers into shaping the plan, including adopting their alternative when it is better. - A clear way to reach and record the decision, with checkpoints, and a plan for when disagreement remains. - A concrete example with an outcome and a lesson. ### Follow-up Questions - You made your case and the tech lead still disagrees. What do you do next? - Tell me about a time engineers convinced you that you were wrong. What changed your mind? - In an AI product where model capabilities shift every few months, how do you argue for a path that may need revisiting soon?