The proposed solution feels good and all but in my experience it would be almost impossible to adopt for most companies operating in VC-istan.
The most extreme case I can think of was a "startup" I worked at that was VC'd to the gills, had an impressive board, with no traction, no revenue and about 25 engineers on staff. What they did was what I liked to call "product development by whim" where they had 5 product managers which each got to decide which features they wanted and the devs went and built it (we really really really needed a way for our non existent users to invite their friends via email, etc).
So if we needed evidence before development the whole house of cards would come falling down because the evidence would have shown no one wanted what we were selling, period.
The most extreme case I can think of was a "startup" I worked at that was VC'd to the gills, had an impressive board, with no traction, no revenue and about 25 engineers on staff. What they did was what I liked to call "product development by whim" where they had 5 product managers which each got to decide which features they wanted and the devs went and built it (we really really really needed a way for our non existent users to invite their friends via email, etc).
So if we needed evidence before development the whole house of cards would come falling down because the evidence would have shown no one wanted what we were selling, period.