The dangers of a feature request

Often internal feature requests are created by anyone in the company. This request goes beyond the description of the friction found and arrives to a solution.

The solution becomes the focus and you tend to lose site of the the reason behind why it was created in the first place. This is dangerous because the solution is handed over to designers, already decided and planned with an appropriate time box and allocated resources.

So the design starts taking off. Benchmarking, interviews, research, wireframes and then what happens when you realize that the solution is flawed and actually the problem goes much deeper? You are stuck.

This is why feature requests are dangerous. I suggest focusing on the opportunity, and not on the solution until all experts and resources are explored and involved.

Don't limit yourself to a quick fix. You risk to spend a lot of time on something that in the end will need to be worked on again. Give your team the space to explore, it will pay off in the end.