Because the team was told “build a tracker” by their stakeholder, “users want a tracker” became the animating principle behind the team’s efforts. Other mandates you’ve likely seen pop up in the news include “users want a chatbot,” “users want a dashboard” or “users want a subscription to their mouse.”

Fundamentally, the question all these teams are asking is not “what needs do our customers have?” but “What features is this product missing?”