A customer is complaining about an engine stalling problem. Two engine management system solutions have been identified. One requires a change in your area of responsibility. The other would require a change in another subsystem. What should you do?
Every overloaded engineer on planet Earth immediately says, in the privacy of his own thoughts, 'Make the other guy do it!' The reason they do not express this thought is because they know it's not the best way to arrive at a decision. There are many possible factors to consider. Surface the ones that seem objectively important to you.
"It seems like there are several things to consider. 1) Are the two solutions technically equivalent? 2) Does the customer have a preference between the two? 3) Is one solution significantly more difficult or time-consuming to implement? 4) Is it more feasible for one or the other of the two subsystem owners to accomplish the task quickly, based on their workload and priorities? From your brief scenario, we don't have the answer to any of those questions, but those are the things I would want to know before either volunteering to do it myself or trying to get the other guy to do it. Hopefully we could work it out between us, but in some situations, the right thing to do would be to lay the facts in front of both of our managers and let them make the call."
