Wise PM Execution: Deciding What a Shared Platform Builds When Teams Compete

You are the Product Manager for a platform at Wise, and several stakeholder groups are asking for different things from it at the same time. How do you decide what the platform builds and in what order? ```hint Sort before you score Before ranking anything, ask which requests the company cannot decline, which would help several teams at once, and which serve only the team asking. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Is the platform internal, serving other Wise product teams, or external, offering Wise's payment infrastructure to banks and businesses, or both? - Which stakeholders are asking: product teams, compliance and risk, customer support and operations, external partners, or leadership? - Are any requests tied to a fixed regulatory or contractual deadline, or are all dates negotiable? - Is the platform team's capacity fixed for this planning period, or can requesting teams contribute engineers to the work they need? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A consistent way to collect and compare requests, framed as problems with evidence rather than as demands for specific features. - Explicit criteria tied to Wise's goals and to the platform's own health, including how mandatory deadlines and risk work are handled. - How capacity is split between stakeholder requests, reusable capabilities and maintenance, and how often the plan is revisited. - A transparent decision and communication process, covering how to say no and how disagreements escalate. - Measures that show whether the platform is serving its stakeholders well over time. ### Follow-up Questions - Two senior leaders each insist their request comes first, and neither request is mandatory. What do you do? - A team says it will build its own version of a capability if you cannot deliver it this quarter. Do you let it? - How would you know, six months from now, that your prioritization approach is working?