Exercise: Negotiation

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Exercise: Negotiation

For each of the scenarios listed below, think about how you would negotiate and which strategies you would use.

negotiation quiz

QUESTION:

negotiation quiz

You just finished presenting your roadmap for next year. The Engineering VP has a lot of feedback that the plan doesn’t make sense given the current state of the product. What do you do?

ANSWER:

Thanks for your response. In this scenario it will be important to better understand the VP’s concerns through active listening. After I have a deeper understanding of the feedback, I would then want to revisit the roadmap to make sure there was no misunderstanding. If the concerns are still valid, I would then want to present multiple solutions for how we could change the roadmap and would gauge how the VP responds to each one.

negotiate q2

QUESTION:

negotiate q2

Engineers have been ready to start working on a new feature for your product. However, the UX designs aren’t finalized and the designer wants to spend more time revising and iterating. However, both you and the engineers think that the designs look fine. What do you do?

ANSWER:

Thanks for your response. In this scenario, it will be helpful to better understand the designer’s interests and concerns. If the designs are basically complete, we should lock them and handoff to eng so that they can start building so the feature can be delivered on time. I would also discuss what would happen if the feature was not delivered on time, both from a user perspective and business perspective. Lastly, I would remind the designer that we can always revisit the design in the future and add more polish.

negotiate q3

QUESTION:

negotiate q3

You and a counterpart PM both have a large P0 feature that needs to be delivered. However, between the two of you and your teams you’ll only be able to deliver 1 of the 2 P0 features-- the feature on your roadmap or the feature on your counterpart’s roadmap. What do you do?

ANSWER:

Thanks for your response. In this specific scenario, it would be helpful to use objective criteria to understand the impact of each feature… Specifically you’ll want to understand and negotiate if one feature will have more impact than another. Does it make sense for both teams to focus on delivering one feature and then the remaining one? What would the impact be if both features were delayed?

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