Engineers are the best equipped to be able to propose possible solution. And so getting engineers involved really early on is important. When i talk to start ups, a lots that are scaling, i talk about the way that you decision make. I don't believe either one of those are actually ever true inside organizations. In reality, if you find yourself stuck into one where you're talking about a complete topsdown or complete bottom up, you're gong to hae nightmare cenario,. But what you're actually after is more like this diamond structure somewhere - at the top, you're talking priority and focus and long term and wise, and at the bottom, there's micro decisions about which library