Avoid Becoming a Feature Factory

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Harry - Hey Sharon, our product must have this feature

Sharon - Why?

Harry - Because it's cool and it should be there.
Busted !!!!!!

In my experience the above conversation is exactly what most of the developers do!!!

They sit in their cubicles, isolate themselves and keep on cranking out new features.

Without thinking about the outcome and without researching their customers' needs.

They keep on coding and testing with their little understanding and convert their product into a Feature factory.

And let's be honest we have all been there.

Including me!!!

Yes I have been there.

Guilty as charged!!!

As a developer We have all been in a situation where we have overloaded a product with tons of features and failed to deliver what the customer needed.

Now I know becoming a feature factory is not something a company dreams off, but somehow down the road it becomes one.

You see, In the early stages of a growing Product, features is what makes the company stand out,,

Each new feature increases downloads, signups, and sales, propelling you ahead of the competition.

You move fast! super quick and deliver features on a daily and weekly basis

But then you hit the bump,,

In the later stages the more features you deliver the more complex your product becomes.

In fact with each additional feature you push your customers away. You focus more on delivering features, Rather solving problems.

But in order to survive,

You’ll need to have a renewed focus on hitting company objectives and solving real problems, instead of just delivering features.

Take this as an example:

Let's say that you want to build a car, but not just any car.

Your goal is to compete with the fastest cars.

Now ,The first thing you will consider when designing the fastest car is a potent engine that can handle such high speed.

And Safety will be the second thing you will pay attention to.

So basically, Your current goal is speed and safety.

This is how you need to prioritise your features.

However, if you concentrate on anything besides these two features, you risk ruining everything.

You might lose your market and you might fail to provide the safety required, and you might become A FEATURE FACTORY.

And this is what happens when you focus on features rather than your customers' needs.

See, Understanding the user base is complex but the success depends on how well you understand them.

Sometimes you need to select a segment of your users as target users because it's very tough to keep everyone happy.

And here's how you can do so -

10 WAYS - How to escape becoming a Feature Factory -

• Focus on Problems, Not Features.
• Prioritise customer feedback and learn from them.
• Retrospectives should be done regularly by product managers.
• Avoid team shuffles at all costs.
• Practise Lean Methodology.
• Don’t make a success theatre out of outputs, measure the outcomes first.
• Replace and remove features that are too complicated to satisfy users.
• Establish a Culture of asking “Why”
• Iterative Immediately after you ship.
• Hire Product Engineers who understand the pain point of the customer and build what they need.

Wrapping up -

Innovation is the key towards a successful Product,,, But Saying yes to every idea you have is not innovation. You need to prioritise what really matters.

The product team must be aware of both the motivation behind the product's creation and the expectations of its intended users.