design and eng are deadlocked — you need to ship in two weeks

the challenge

your designer and your engineering lead have been going in circles for three weeks. the designer wants to ship a reworked navigation that requires a significant front-end refactor and introduces two new interaction patterns that haven't been tested with users. the engineering lead says the refactor can't be done safely in the time available and that the new interactions create accessibility issues they haven't had time to audit. both are technically correct about different things. both feel like the other side is blocking progress. they've stopped responding to each other's slack threads and are now routing everything through you.

the feature ships in two weeks whether navigation is reworked or not — there's a customer commitment. the current navigation is genuinely confusing to new users, which is why the redesign was started. a "do nothing" hold-state will frustrate the designer and confirm the engineer's instinct to avoid design pressure.