
Ask HN: How do you handle inter-team dependencies? - ritoparade
Our company isn&#x27;t very good at prioritizing inter-team dependencies.  For example, team A depends on team B to deliver a new API, but team B fails to deliver.  The API is the most important thing for the company, but often Team B is prioritizing their own projects.  Team A ends up repeatedly pinging and negotiating with team B, but then ultimately implements their own hacky workaround, degrading the product and introducing technical debt.<p>I have a few ideas for how to fix things, for example by having each team maintain a backlog for their dependent teams, or instituting some sort of story point &quot;currency&quot; that the requesting team can spend.  But I first wanted to ask people here how they solve this problem.  Ad hoc conversations?  Constant pinging and negotiation?  Something more formal?  Maybe this can&#x27;t be solved with process and must be solved culturally instead.
======
msurekci
I'm assuming that both teams are technical. If so, I don't see any reason as
to why your own team can't build the API that they need.

Become an autonomous team, break down all dependencies.

~~~
ritoparade
This is sometimes what happens, but it's far less efficient than the ideal.
Specialization means that our engineers don't have to spend such a big chunk
of their time learning different code bases and build systems.

