You're advising a company where engineering demand is coming from multiple directions at once: customer-facing features, platform reliability, technical debt, and internal tooling. Leadership wants a clear way to decide how much engineering effort should go to immediate business needs versus longer-term investments.
How do you think about balancing engineering investment with business needs?
Business asks are visible and urgent, while platform and debt costs are often hiddenDifferent work types have different time horizons and ROI profilesCustomer commitments can distort normal roadmap planningUnder-investing in reliability can reduce future delivery capacity