At a logistics-tracking startup, the engineering lead wants to spend next quarter rebuilding the notification service, which caused four outages in six months, each lasting 2–5 hours and triggering service credits to customers. Sales wants a route-optimisation feature that two large prospects have asked for, together worth about as much new annual revenue as the company currently earns from its ten biggest customers. Both need the whole platform team for the quarter.
Recommend how to split or sequence the quarter. Make the trade-off explicit, estimate what each path risks, and say how you would bring engineering and sales to the decision.
100 points, 60% to pass.
Frame both as revenue questions. Outages threaten existing revenue (service credits, churn risk at renewal, and the credibility sales depends on); the feature is prospective revenue that is not yet signed. Look for options between all-or-nothing: stabilise the notification service's worst failure mode first (monitoring, fail-over) in a fraction of the quarter, and scope a route-optimisation pilot the prospects can sign against. Ask sales for commitment evidence (letters of intent, pilot terms) before the team is fully redirected. The decision should be explicit about what risk is being accepted and have a review point.