In a situation where engineering had to say no to product management — did that impact the working relationship? If so, how did you smooth things over?

It depends on which kind of engineering team because each different team will have a different relationship to product management. Research and development engineers, for example, deal with product management way more than an intralogistics solutions engineering team might. That said, if there is a continuous improvement process established, I don’t foresee any impact on the relationship between those engineers and their product management department. It will also depend on whether product management’s suggestions are taken into account and on how product management deals with hearing “no.”

Engineering needs to ensure that if they have said no to any recent feature request from Product Management, it should be backed by solid data and proper documentation because PM will surely escalate this issue to leadership. To smooth things over, take them out for coffee or beer and make sure you accept next feature request from PM. ;)