Deep Dive: How to Build and Present a Business Case for Big Engineering Initiatives (When You're Not an Engineer)

Demystifying the Tech Side of Product Globalization

First, I know I didn’t post last week, I was presenting at LocWorld and to be honest I was so overwhelmed and excited that I forgot! So I made sure this post is extra fantastic to make up for it (and thanks for being patient with me).

Huge huge thank you to everyone who came and supported my talk, I hope you walked away feeling like you learned something new!

Ok, so this Deep Dive is one I’m so psyched to share with you. One of the most important skills I’ve picked up as a non-engineer working in deeply technical spaces is how to make a compelling case for engineering investment. Not little bug fixes or quality-of-life tweaks…I'm talking about real, meaningful infrastructure work. The kind that costs money, takes time, and requires buy-in from multiple teams.

And here’s the thing: if you want to lead cross-functional initiatives, influence roadmaps, or scale systems that actually work, if you want to grow as a leader, if you want to show you have what it takes to influence product, you really have to get comfortable doing this.

I’ve done it in multiple companies, from start ups to big companies like Meta and Spotify, for everything from localization pipelines to AI translation platforms to full-on internal tooling rebuilds. In this post, I’ll walk you through how I do it, what I include, and how I position it. PLUS, I’ll share a template I’ve developed and reused across companies.

This is the in depth framework I wish someone had handed me years ago, and I’m really excited to share it with you!