There's often a massive gap between a company's strategic goals and where development teams actually spend time. In one case, only 2% of capacity was spent on the top strategic goal because teams are "magnets for requests" that derail progress on the big picture.

Proving the ROI for developer productivity tools is challenging, as studies on their impact are often inconclusive. A more defensible business model focuses on outright automation of specific tasks (e.g., auto-updating documentation in CI). This provides a clear, outcome-oriented value proposition that is easier to sell.

Product managers who feel "too busy" to provide context are making a false economy. A simple five-minute explanation or Loom video clarifying the "why" behind a task can prevent an engineer from spending a week or more building the wrong thing, offering a massive return on investment.

According to the 'dark side' of Metcalfe's Law, each new team member exponentially increases the number of communication channels. This hidden cost of complexity often outweighs the added capacity, leading to more miscommunication and lost information. Improving operational efficiency is often a better first step than hiring.

Instead of over-analyzing and philosophizing about process improvements, simply force the team to increase its cadence and ship faster. This discomfort forces quicker, more natural problem-solving, causing many underlying inefficiencies to self-correct without needing a formal change initiative.

When pursuing a long-term strategic solution, dedicate product management time to high-level discovery and partner alignment first. This doesn't consume engineering resources, allowing the dev team to remain focused on mitigating the immediate, more visceral aspects of the problem.

Product managers often hit cognitive fatigue from constantly re-formatting the same core information for different audiences (e.g., customer notes to PRD, PRD to Jira tickets, tickets to executive summaries). Automating this "translation" work with AI frees up mental energy for higher-value strategic tasks and prevents lazy, context-poor handoffs.

Many teams fall into a "busyness trap," engaging in activities that don't advance core objectives. This creates a hidden tax on productivity, as effort is spent on work that doesn't move the needle. The key is shifting focus from simply being busy to working on the right, high-impact tasks.

Instead of arguing for more time, product leaders should get stakeholder buy-in on a standardized decision-making process. The depth and rigor of each step can then be adjusted based on available time, from a two-day workshop to an eight-month study, without skipping agreed-upon stages.