What is a feature factory?
Feature factory is a derogatory term to describe organisations focused on churning out features rather than solving problems for customers.
Such organisations are characterised by a failure to test ideas before building them, this leads to shipped features which may deliver little or no value o the user.and does not adequately assess its user value.
The pitfalls of operating a feature factory are:
- wasting development time and budget.
- losing ground to competitors.
- additional functionality which makes the product complicated and difficult to use.
Generally speaking, teams working in a feature factory can be said to not spend enough time in the Discovery step of the product management process 🔍. A good method to use for avoiding becoming a feature factory is the Opportunity Solution Tree.
John Cutler coined the term and describes the 12 signs that you are working in one.
