Feature Factory

Weak (or absent) Product Owners lead to team members working in a Feature Factory. John Cutlefish coined this term in 2016 to describe a software developer who complained that they spent their day in a cubicle, just shipping features.

I see this happening for many reasons:

• Rigid roadmaps, often published with dates more than a year in advance
• Team members who don’t understand the vision or the strategy
• Limited discovery work with clients
• Team members not involved in the discovery with clients
• Non-stop urgency and fires
• Organizations that obsess over velocity
• Focus on output (number of widgets) instead of outcome (solving the customer problem)
• Siloed teams and handoffs
• Ignoring technical debt
• Features never updated or removed

If we want to move away from the Feature Factory, we should focus on outcomes. Use either a Lean Startup approach or have a clear Product Vision and a Strategy (consider Impact Mapping and Story Mapping). Involve team members, not just in the regular backlog refinement, but also in the discovery work. Ask, did our solution help the customer? Measure the impact. Run experiments with customers (hint: Lean Startup or Lean UX) and be prepared to kill features that didn’t solve their problem.

Moving away from being a Feature Factory to an Outcome Driven Organization makes the work more fun, and it also leads to a more profitable business.