Why Your Engineers Are Building Different Systems—and How to Align Them

At the GitHub AI Summit, I ran an exercise focused on capacity planning across four teams working on closely related services. Officially, the goal was to ideate how we could better manage our GPU compute capacity. Unofficially, I had a deeper agenda: to reveal just how differently each team saw the system—even though we were all building the same product.

Engineers realizing that they are all building different types of chairs, bar stools, recliners, and more. Realizing they need to understand what chair means first.

It might sound odd to say I had an ulterior motive, but I’ve seen this pattern everywhere I’ve worked. Even on highly aligned, well-intentioned teams, you’ll often find:

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