Convenience vs. Relevance in Product Development: A Trap for Teams

In product development, teams often face a critical tradeoff: building for convenience vs. building for relevance. While convenience—ease of development, minimal effort, or faster go-to-market—may seem like the logical choice in the face of staffing constraints, skill gaps, or aggressive deadlines, it can lead to launching products or features that fail to resonate with customers. This tension is a common but dangerous trap that can ultimately undermine a product’s success. A key part of building for relevance is having a robust process for gathering highly relevant requirements.

The Allure of Convenience

Teams prioritize convenience for several reasons:

• Short-term wins: Rapidly shipping features gives the illusion of progress.
• Internal constraints: Limited staff, skills, or competing priorities push teams toward what's feasible, not necessarily what’s valuable.
• Deadline pressure: Timelines drive decisions, often at the expense of thoughtful customer validation.
• Technical ease: Developers prefer solutions that fit within existing architectures or require minimal effort.

This leads to products being optimized for ease of development rather than for actual user needs. Features may be shipped simply because they are achievable rather than because they solve meaningful problems.

The Cost of Ignoring Relevance

When relevance takes a backseat to convenience, several negative outcomes emerge:

• Low adoption and engagement: Users don’t see value, leading to poor retention and wasted development effort.
• Rework and technical debt: Teams end up revisiting features later, spending more time fixing or improving them.
• Missed market opportunities: Competitors who prioritize customer relevance outperform in the long run.
• Loss of credibility: Customers and stakeholders lose trust when products don’t align with their needs.

How to Prioritize Relevance Over Convenience (Including Effective Requirements Gathering)

Shifting the mindset from convenience to relevance requires deliberate effort, starting with a strong foundation in requirements gathering:

How to Prioritize Relevance Over Convenience

Shifting the mindset from convenience to relevance requires deliberate effort:

1. Understand the Problem, Not Just the Feature Request

Before jumping into feature discussions, deeply explore the problem you’re solving. Ask:

• Who is experiencing this problem? (User personas, segments)
• What are their pain points? (Interviews, surveys, support tickets)
• Why does solving this matter? (Business impact, customer value)

💡 Tip: Instead of asking, “What features do you need?” ask, “What are you trying to accomplish?”

2. Engage the Right Stakeholders Early

Involve multiple perspectives to avoid bias and incomplete requirements:

• Customers / End Users – Primary source of truth.
• Customer Success & Support Teams – Have insights into user frustrations.
• Sales & Marketing – Understand market trends and competitor gaps.
• Executives & Product Leaders – Align with business strategy.
• Engineering & Design Teams – Validate feasibility and user experience.

🔄 Method: Run cross-functional workshops to ensure alignment from all angles.

3. Use Multiple Data Sources

Don't rely on just conversations—validate with hard data:

• Usage Analytics – Identify how customers interact with the product.
• Support Tickets & Feedback – Analyze recurring pain points.
• Competitor Analysis – Learn what alternatives users are choosing.
• Market Trends – Stay ahead of industry shifts.

📊 Example: If analytics show 80% of users abandon a workflow at step 3, that’s a strong indicator of friction.

4. Prioritize Requirements Using a Value Framework

Not all requirements are equally important. Use frameworks like:

MoSCoW (Must Have, Should Have, Could Have, Won't Have)

• Must-Have – Critical for product success.
• Should-Have – Important, but not launch-blocking.
• Could-Have – Nice to have, but low impact.
• Won't-Have (For Now) – Not relevant or feasible.

RICE (Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort)

• Reach: How many users will benefit?
• Impact: How much will it improve their experience?
• Confidence: How certain are we that this will succeed?
• Effort: What’s the development complexity?

🔍 Example: A feature that impacts 100K users, has high confidence, and requires low effort should be prioritized over one with limited reach.

5. Validate with Customers Before Development

Before building, prototype and test with real users:

• Wireframes & Mockups – Get early feedback before coding.
• User Testing Sessions – Observe real-world interactions.
• Beta Releases & A/B Testing – Validate with a small group.

🚀 Example: Instead of assuming a feature will be useful, launch an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) and track real adoption.

6. Continuously Iterate and Adapt

Requirements evolve—make it a continuous loop:

1. Launch
2. Measure (User analytics, surveys, NPS)
3. Learn (Identify gaps)
4. Refine & Improve

🔄 Never treat requirements as static documents—keep them dynamic based on user behavior.

Final Thoughts

Convenience might help a team meet a deadline, but relevance ensures the product meets a real need. Organizations that prioritize relevance over ease of development ultimately build products that create lasting impact, foster customer loyalty, and drive long-term success. The key is to recognize when convenience is creeping into decision-making and consciously shift toward solving real customer problems—because in the end, relevance is the true measure of success.

Credit - GPT4o, Gemini models for improving the quality of the article based on my original idea.

Product Management Product Development Agile Methodologies