>If the VP requires these numbers and went as far as back channeling you there is probably a quite good reason for that.

This is good intuition but generally people won't tell you whether they have a good or silly/self-serving reason in my experience, and you can only really get them to surface that by comparing it to the priority of other commitments and forcing them to depriotize something.

I think the ratings might be a bit borked. There's a dialogue path choice that results in the A+ where you end up asking directly whether the back-channel was worth another delay, and you. The VP says no. No junior gets interrupted.

> you can only really get them to surface that

Sometimes you don’t even need to surface it. You just force responsibility: “This will prevent us from being ready for Friday’s demo. If you’re cool with that I’ll run it by {project sponsor}.”

Now it’s between the VP and the project sponsor - as it rightfully should be.