[jamil7]

I think in the scenario you’re presenting the engineering team has failed to surface the problem or the other teams have failed to accurately present it. I do agree with what you’re saying about engineering teams becoming bottlenecks if their immediate instinct is to derail or mistrust other teams and once the cycle has started it’s hard for the teams involved to break out of this pattern. I do still think there is a responsibility for engineering teams, especially at small companies to look for opportunities to solve problems in a simpler or cheaper way if they can and that might not be obvious to other teams. The customer might have actually just needed a sink or second toilet for example.

[devjab]

This is where the less than premium options come into play isn’t it? You can present product with a plan of what they want, and the consequences and cost. You should also present them with other options, which could be an extra toilet or sink. Then you let product and the customer decide if they actually want the full thing or not.