The Jurassic Park Problem

I believe all SaaS companies will eventually develop what I call "The Jurassic Park Problem." 🦖

This is where users create a workaround in a product that helps solves a customer need - but do it in a way that was not even close to intended by the people who built the product.

Much like in Jurassic Park, the team who built the product are typically horrified by this unexpected turn of events when their creation "turns" on them so to speak.

Life... uh, finds a way.

Usually the immediate reaction from product and tech teams is to try to ask people to stop doing the workaround or put guard rails in place to prevent it from being possible.

I remember my own reaction when I saw an internal user adding almost 100 filtering criteria in our segment builder that was creating insane queries behind the scenes. The UI was barely functional. We didn't consider that anyone would have the patience to add more than a few.

It was really slow and clunky, but it did work. And it got the result they needed.

Now, when I am presented with one of these unexpected workarounds instead of trying to shut it down, I use it as an opportunity to lean into discovery and support.

Did we miss something in technical design and architecture that we need to account for?

Is there something wrong about the current strategy or prioritization that needs to be revisited?

Is there a way we can enable this in a safe way in the short term and embrace that the raptors will always test the fences?

We do need to avoid being "eaten" by our creations - but we also need to take the opportunity to understand whether we're missing something really important that can put us on a more valuable path our users are pulling us toward.

Who else has found an interesting insight in a Jurassic Park problem?