“If” vs “When”
1 min read
Designers will get frustrated when trying to get features on to roadmaps or into builds. Things they care deeply about can often get deprioritized. The knee jerk reaction is to blame the PM or Eng teams as “not caring”. Designers will then double down on trying to fight for their feature by justifying its impact with more presentations or research.
What you need to determine when you hear “no” is whether the person is arguing “if” the feature should ever be built or “when” is the right time to focus resources on it. Try asking “when would we build this?” or “what would have to be true for us to make this P0?”.
A lot of the time, the debate is about prioritization vs ideation. It isn’t that the idea is bad it is just competing with a lot of other demands.