Every team thinks it's the one being blocked!

After years of building with teams, I'm convinced most dependency problems aren't scheduling problems. They're perspective problems.

Every cross-team handoff has two sides that never see it the same way. If you're waiting, the other team looks slow, or like they've deprioritized you. If you're the one being waited on, you're underwater and this was never the fire you were told to fight. Both true, from where each of you sits. So the work just hangs in the gap — "in progress" on one board, "blocking us" on another. I watched a two-day handoff sit for three weeks once, each side sure the ball was in the other's court.

The usual fixes all help, and all quietly break at the same spot:

• Put every dependency on a shared board — works until people stop updating it

• A standing sync between the teams — good until it turns into a status meeting nobody preps for

• Skip process and just DM the person — works best, scales worst

• One named owner per handoff — helps, when someone remembers to assign it

Every one of them leans on people manually keeping two views in sync. Which is exactly the part that falls apart the moment everyone's busy.

So I'm curious what's actually held up for you, and it probably looks different depending on where you sit. Whatever you are — eng, design, product, data, ops — are you usually the one waiting, or the one being waited on? And what actually gets it moving again?