> My husband and I took Jason and his older sister, Leslie, to the Museum of Natural History. We really enjoyed it, and the kids were just great. Only on the way out we had to pass a gift shop. Jason, our four-year-old, went wild over the souvenirs. Most of the stuff was overpriced, but we finally bought him a little set of rocks. Then he started whining for a model dinosaur. I tried to explain that we had already spent more than we should have. His father told him to quit his complaining and that he should be happy for what we did buy him. Jason began to cry. My husband told him to cut it out, and that he was acting like a baby. Jason threw himself on the floor and cried louder.
> Everyone was looking at us. I was so embarrassed that I wanted the floor to open up. Then—I don’t know how the idea came to me—I pulled a pencil and paper out of my bag and started writing. Jason asked what I was doing. I said, “I’m writing that Jason wishes he had a dinosaur.” He stared at me and said, “And a prism, too.” I wrote, “A prism, too.”
> Then he did something that bowled me over. He ran over to his sister, who was watching the whole scene, and said, “Leslie, tell Mommy what you want. She’ll write it down for you, too.” And would you believe it, that ended it. He went home very peacefully.
> I’ve used the idea many times since. Whenever I’m in a toy store with Jason and he runs around pointing to everything he wants, I take out a pencil and a scrap of paper and write it all down on his “wish list.” That seems to satisfy him. And it doesn’t mean I have to buy any of the things for him—unless maybe it’s a special occasion. I guess what Jason likes about his “wish list” is that it shows that I not only know what he wants but that I care enough to put it in writing.
(If it's customers, I just write it down)
However, I've found that being really open and collaborative with people helps mitigate the manipulation factor by a significant margin. In other words, you get them to agree that the project is not the highest priority or the highest ROI thing to be working on. You ask: "Given the list of W, X, Y, and Z, and keeping in mind that we only have enough resources to tackle two of these at a time, do you think X is the most important?" and they say "Well, X would be cool but yeah, W and Z would give us the most ROI, so let's hold off on X and Y until we have more time and resources."
The key is to be (or appear) really genuine with this. If it's obvious that you're kicking the can down the road because you don't want to do it, you won't win any friends or influence people. But if you can approach it with "I'd love to do X but the realities of our situation mean that we can't" in an authentic way, then you stand a much greater chance of having both sides walk away with a sense of accomplishment. They feel heard and valued, and you don't have to waste resources on something you don't think is a good idea.
If you can't be authentic about that, then I would just go the truthful route of "This isn't going to happen" and try and just be honest about the realities of the situation. They might feel hurt and rejected, but it's better than them feeling manipulated, IMO.
Half the time they won't bother. -Your- effort is free, but -their- effort has a cost.
The other half of the time they will, because they care about it, and so it goes into the backlog, and they get to see what stuff takes precedence (and it's a legitimately good faith effort on my part to see it ranked appropriately, and that they feel informed as to what is coming ahead of it and why).
Even a small task is usually enough to filter out requests where the requestor is basically trying to move a task from their list to your list..
But if you have a product manager (and they're doing their job), then all you have to do is tell them the truth. Let them figure out which features are priority, or will lead to the most revenue, or whatever. That's their job.
I was in an Extreme Programming estimating session one time. A particular story came up for our consideration, and several people groaned. Nobody wanted us to do the story, because it was going to be a bear to implement. I said "Just tell them the truth. They'll figure out why this is a bad idea." We estimated six months, and they decided that they didn't want the feature at that price.
"Good strategy works even when you know it's coming" - something like this from "Sanctuary for all" :) One example of that was mentioned here few times: features need money. And resources and time.
But sometimes features can be crammed into project without bigger investment - just talk to devs and and often they will find a way. Sometimes it works perfectly, when overall architecture is good or extendable. And often it make total mess in codebase. But cost nothing ! ;)
Yeah, the future trick is kind of interesting because it solves the immediate problem and it allows people to feel like you heard their concerns and valued their advice. If that is what they are looking for then its a great solution. If they have spotted legit problems then you need to actually reassess things.
I guess like everything it is very contingent on the environment. It worked in this specific context.