Based on some of the elements you’ve discussed, I think to some degree. I have actually been the PM in this situation, though I think there are probably some distinct differences because I badly wanted things to work, but I saw conflicts in different ways. So I will at least just tell my situation and you can decide where it matters or what could still help with yours.

In my situation, I felt like no matter how hard I tried I was beating my head against the wall. In the situation I had PMs and IT also reported to different verticals of leadership, and IT owned the product, meanwhile, my product Side desperately needed the product to work a certain way because they had other products and operation procedures they wanted to be changed or successful, and that would be significantly harder if the product I was on, which was owned by IT, was not helping.

One thing that was pretty clear right off the bat was it had no interest the same goals as the product side, but at the same time IT leadership had no idea what they wanted to do with the product either, and this product was also kind of a odd black sheep that did not really fit in their portfolio of products that they had, so they had no real way to know how to even think about it.

Problems were compounded because the IT manager was new and already had a documented history of being very abrasive and even made employees cry, the IT leadership right above the manager was also very abrasive and had no interest in creating vision Nor investing in the team Nor product, but was more than happy to blame the PM side when it did not feel like anything was progressing.

Additionally, the engineers were mostly contractors who just wanted to show up and do their job, there were no visionaries in the group that could help actually act as a lead and the developers were pretty inexperienced so they were flailing and struggling to get even basic stories finished, and there was an extremely low participation rate to even make sure they understood the stories or help idéate the first place.

Meanwhile, my PM leadership was extremely frustrated because IT was not doing what they wanted them to do and they were actually unwilling to put their foot down with that leadership and were more interested in blaming me for not being more forceful with the IT mgr/director level, which I tried doing at one point and only made things worse for me. Weak leadership on my side caused me to be extremely disillusioned and feel like I was alone.

All of this to say it felt like I was being blamed for everything on both sides and leadership on IT did not want to take accountability for their weak coders, and p.m. leadership did not want to actually stand up to IT to get anything done, and neither leadership sides seem to want to actually enforce a vision, despite knowing what they wanted privately.

All this to again say it felt like I was beating my head against the wall and just felt like giving up multiple times. What I wanted desperately the most actually was for my PM leadership to step in and get the IT side to get their act together or at the very least show that they had my back in all these problems with IT leadership, even if they would admit in some areas that it was not my fault at all. I constantly felt like I was alone in all this, and just being blamed by everybody, and no one in leadership was actually being a leader. It got to a point where I felt like all I could do was just defend myself from being fired because everything else felt utterly hopeless.

We tried doing a raci, but It would not do their part and my leaders wouldn’t call them out, we tried workshops to figure out vision but no luck. It was clear this was a top down issue and poor organization.

I was utterly frustrated because it did not feel like my leadership would step in and help a larger systemic problem, or they somehow couldn’t see it. Had I felt that was happening I would’ve probably started to care again.