Including sales teams in the product process is hard because of the time aspect The worst-case scenario here is to find out that someone has already sold somet

Including sales teams in the product process is hard because of the time aspect The worst-case scenario here is to find out that someone has already sold something and now it's screwing up your dev schedule. This becomes a power struggle between sales & product because allowing this will make it the norm, but turning them down can look to non-technical senior management like PMs are directly harming the company and undercutting sales. ICs are also nice + not political savvy, and can be plied and subverted by sales -- 'hey come out with a drink with us' turns into taking on random work. This gets political fast, especially because the power balance between sales and product is usually off -- one or the other is the star and doesn't listen to anybody. Good information flow requires trust, skill and good leadership.