> I'm working on migrating our apps to the parent company's VM launching and deploy platform. Should be fairly straightforward, I think. Unfortunately, the deploy tooling isn't entirely compatible with our app so I ask the team if they can implement $X feature to support our app.
It's probably easier and quicker to change the app to work with their platform. If nothing else, it's going to be much easier to staff the project; your team knows the app.
> The first engineer I talk to doesn't even attempt to answer my question but redirects me to their manager. Ok, that's odd, I think, but whatever.
That's not an unusual response (https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20070522-00/?p=26...).
> Manager says sure, just fill out this feature request doc. It's a Google Docs template with 4 (!) pages of required documentation to just explain why I want this feature implemented. It asks for my team name, the motivation, why I can't solve the problem some other way, yada yada...ok, I guess it's good to document your work, so sure. I fill it out and submit it.
This strongly suggests that ad hoc feature requests are or have been an issue for the team. It's also a good way to weed out requests that the requester isn't serious about or has an available alternative.
> No response after two days. Then I get an automated email that their skip level manager has approved the work. Huh? This is followed by an email that the team's eng manager approved the work. Why do two layers of management need to approve work on something they have no knowledge about?
These managers are running interference for their team so they can get work done.
> Finally, after many rounds of arguing about why this needs to be done in the first place (ahem: you told us to migrate to your platform, and it literally does not work for our app), they quote us a delivery timeline of end of Q1 in 2022.
Most development teams have a backlog; I'd be concerned about the work quality of one that didn't.
> At this point I am in absolute shock. This should take no more than a few days to implement.
The change might take a few days but the team already has a backlog of WIP (work in progress) (http://www.leanmanufacture.net/leanterms/wip.aspx). The time to completion is based on the other tasks in the queue. If the migration needs to happen sooner then that's between your manager and the manager of the other team.
> So I reach out to the manager and ask what is going on. This is a simple task, I said. Why does it take an entire quarter for your team to deliver? He doesn't have an answer.
Every task is simple when you aren't the one doing it.
This was a bad move tactically; calling him out is not going to get you the results you want.
> I tell him I'm happy to fix the issue myself, if they link me to the relevant codebase. "It shouldn't be too hard to dig in and submit a patch," I think to myself. He says he cannot give me access to the codebase for compliance reasons, and that only members of his team have R/W on that repo. What???
Maybe they don't want to support bespoke features for your app. You can check in the code and be done but they're stuck supporting the change forever.