What is a Feature Factory?
In product management lingo, feature factory typically describes a business focused on building features rather than solving problems for customers.
Feature factories are often found in the tech industry, where
They work to build more and more features for a product or service, without measuring it's impact on customers.
They are usually not focused on customer needs, but rather on what they build for them. In contrast, a problem-solver is focused on solving problems for their customers by offering them solutions to meet their needs.
A feature factory fails to test ideas and features before building and only focuses on developing and shiping new features or products.
It can be defined as a company that has products or services where the customer’s needs are not the starting point of the process, but rather an afterthought.
A Feature Factory typically creates these enhancements in order to better compete with other companies in the same industry, rather than focusing on solving problems for customers.
How do you avoid being a Feature Factory?
Companies can avoid being a feature factory by focusing on the customer needs and understanding what they want from the product or service. They should also focus on the quality of their work, not just quantity.
In order to avoid being a feature factory, you should always be thinking about the customer experience and how you can improve it with every new feature that you add to your product.
To avoid being a feature factory, it is important to set your own standards of quality. You should not just be concerned about the quantity of features but also their quality.
Make sure that you are not working on features that are too specific for a small group of people or for a small audience. Learn how to say no to a feature request.
A system to collect customer feedback such as Rapidr before and after building new features would help streamline the product development cycle.