6 Silly Symptoms Of A Feature Factory

Navigating the hazards of heads-down Feature-Driven Development

Note: This post comes from my main newsletter The Product Post. To gain weekly resources on product and deep-dives on how to improve your strategy and product craft, please consider subscribing to the above! ☝

Like most new professionals to Product Management, I always thought the value of your role was to create fun and cool solutions to solve customer problems.

You know, run some interviews, gain some findings to validate your hypotheses (potentially confirming your own biases), then shipping an extremely functional and simple to use product that is miles apart from your competitors. Easy right?

Take for example, this analytics product I once launched, hoping to cross-sell customers and improve retention. What I thought was a Target Addressable Market of $millions a year, only resulted in achieving a handful of clients adopting it with a shameful ARR.

So, yes, I’ve been there. Wallowing shamelessly in a Feature Factory. I’ve learned now to move on, but only through experience.

But my pain is your gain.

Instead of having to experience these yourself, here’s a short checklist of what I call the syndromes of a Feature Factory, with some quick tips on how to get out of each one.

Let’s dive in.