Those questions assume an existing framework where "the feature", "state of the art", "half-assed", and "failed" are all well-defined. But my experience is that

Those questions assume an existing framework where "the feature", "state of the art", "half-assed", and "failed" are all well-defined. But my experience is that the framing itself is most of where the challenge lies. You end up with team A who wants to add the feature, team B who thinks it's an anti-feature, team C who thinks the entire application where feature lives should be scrapped, PM D who says users can already accomplish what the feature does using existing features, UX design E who says the fact that users are still asking for the feature means all those other features must be poorly designed and we should fix those...