Get this all the time in software development, being given “requirements” and most of them are pretty stupid wishlist items.

I constantly argue that that will not get a good outcome if they just call everything is equally a “hard requirement”.

What they want to do is negotiate and start from an unreasonable anchor point. In my case I find it super tiresome because my stance is always the same, make a priority list and we’ll get as far as we can. But escalating and tying us up in meetings to try to argue for stuff you are just using as a negotiating tactic only gets in the way of us doing what we can. We are going to do what fits, and people are not going to work unpaid overtime or holidays just to meet some arbitrary deadline. If it doesn’t fit, well it won’t be long until the next window.

My team has a very long history of ultimately exceeding the hopes of the folks asking for stuff and yet they continue to try to get us to commit to stuff we never will.