Product managers are valuable to have involved in product planning and design and in big picture acceptance testing, but they shouldn’t be gatekeepers. If you c

Product managers are valuable to have involved in product planning and design and in big picture acceptance testing, but they shouldn’t be gatekeepers. If you can, create a policy that prevents them from blocking deployment. If you can’t do that: Give them access early when it’s still in a rough stage so that big things can be fixed early and so that they can feel they’ve had their way by reporting (obvious) real bugs instead of bikeshedding. Then as you approach launch, set a cutoff date. Anything not fixed by then will be treated as a bug to be priorized and fixed as part of the general backlog. Then the product manager can decide whether they’d rather fix their bikeshed nitpick or some other real bug.