29 May 20261 min readProduct / Planning
Three questions before a workflow becomes a product requirement
ByEthan
A request is not automatically a requirement. First find out how often it happens, who depends on it, and what it is costing.
“Can the system also do this?” is a reasonable question. The mistake is treating every reasonable request as a reason to expand the build.
Make the trade-off visible
Ask three things. How often does this actually happen? Who depends on it when it does? What goes wrong or gets slower without it? The answers separate a real operational need from an edge case that can stay manual for now.
Run your team's last feature request through those three questions and see if it survives.
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