Great products die in silos!

A few months into one of my mobile product cycles, we started building something I was genuinely excited about a BLE-based router recovery feature.

The idea was simple but powerful: help field engineers reconnect routers quickly, without needing cables or manual setup. Using Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), the mobile app could automatically detect, pair, and recover routers on-site.

We spent about three months building it with two teams - the app development team and the Firmware team. The UX was clean, the logic was solid, and initial field feedback was strong. Sales Engineers were excited about it.

Then one day, during a cross-team discussion, I found out that the hardware team had no plans to add BLE module as part of the future routers. Their roadmap had shifted and I wasn’t aware of it.

Our feature, which depended entirely on BLE, became irrelevant overnight.

What Actually Went Wrong

It wasn’t a failure of engineering or design. It was a failure of alignment.

Our mobile team executed perfectly, firmware team helped to get the right compatibility but we weren’t fully connected with the hardware roadmap. By the time I discovered the change, it was too late to pivot.

We had built for a reality that no longer existed.

What I Learned

That experience changed how I think about product management. We often focus on delivery, velocity, and outcomes but those mean little if the ecosystem around you shifts silently.

Here’s what I took away:

• Alignment beats execution - Fast teams moving in different directions still lose time.

• Visibility matters - Even if you don’t own a dependency, you need to track it.

• Short syncs save months - A 15-minute PM-to-PM alignment can prevent massive waste.

We closed the feature before release. It hurt, but it was the right call. Now, very often I ask myself:

“What’s changed that could break what we’re building?”