Agreed. Although it's possible to get people to collaboratively agree on priorities. I've had a lot of success with putting stakeholders together at at table, making them write down what they want on cards, and then saying, "Ok, put them in strict linear order of delivery." It helps to give them a bunch of cards with "RELEASE" written boldly on them.
I once did this with 25 people representing a dozen different nonprofits, and I've done it many times at both startups and large companies, so I know it can work. Every time, people try to put things side by side. But if I gently say, "strict linear order" enough times, everybody gets it. And then they start discussing, negotiating, planning.
Basically, they gave out poker chips that represented the available engineering capacity for the quarter. And then had everybody discuss and persuade until they arrived at a quarterly plan.
As you say, the trick is to have some way to make sure people don't overallocate, which they dearly love to do. With that in place, stakeholders stop fighting with engineering and instead wrestle with one another, letting engineers quietly get on with popping things off the backlog and shipping them.
I once did this with 25 people representing a dozen different nonprofits, and I've done it many times at both startups and large companies, so I know it can work. Every time, people try to put things side by side. But if I gently say, "strict linear order" enough times, everybody gets it. And then they start discussing, negotiating, planning.
Another approach, one that works if your teams are established enough that you can give good engineering estimates, was what Rob Fan at Sharethrough used for quarterly planning: https://www.slideshare.net/rfan622/launch-scale-presentation
Basically, they gave out poker chips that represented the available engineering capacity for the quarter. And then had everybody discuss and persuade until they arrived at a quarterly plan.
As you say, the trick is to have some way to make sure people don't overallocate, which they dearly love to do. With that in place, stakeholders stop fighting with engineering and instead wrestle with one another, letting engineers quietly get on with popping things off the backlog and shipping them.