The Feature Factory Trap
In the world of product development, there's a dangerous trap that many teams fall into: the feature factory. It's a place where success is measured by output rather than outcomes, where shipping features becomes more important than solving problems.
I've seen it happen countless times. Teams work tirelessly, building feature after feature, checking items off their roadmap. They celebrate each release, but when they look at the impact—user engagement, retention, revenue—the needle barely moves.
Why does this happen? Because they're building what's easy, what's requested, or what's assumed to be valuable—not what actually matters.
The Cost of Building the Wrong Things
Building features that don't matter isn't just ineffective—it's actively harmful:
1. Opportunity Cost
Every hour spent building the wrong feature is an hour not spent building something that could truly move your business forward.
2. Product Bloat
Unnecessary features don't just sit there harmlessly—they create complexity, confuse users, and make your product harder to understand and use.
3. Maintenance Burden
Each feature you build must be maintained, tested, and supported. The wrong features drain resources indefinitely.
4. Team Morale
Nothing kills motivation faster than realizing you've spent months building something nobody uses or values.
How to Build What Matters
So how do we ensure we're building what matters? Here's the approach I've found most effective:
1. Start with Problems, Not Solutions
The most common mistake is jumping straight to solutions. Instead:
- Identify the core problems your users face - Validate these problems through research and data - Prioritize based on impact and alignment with business goals - Only then consider potential solutions
2. Define Clear Success Metrics
Before building anything, ask:
- How will we know if this feature is successful? - What specific metrics should improve? - What magnitude of improvement would justify the investment?
If you can't answer these questions clearly, you're not ready to build.
3. Embrace the Minimum Viable Product
The MVP approach isn't just about shipping faster—it's about learning faster:
- Identify the smallest version that can test your core hypothesis - Build and release it quickly - Measure the results rigorously - Iterate based on what you learn
4. Develop a Ruthless Prioritization Framework
Not all valuable features are equally valuable. Create a framework that considers:
- Potential impact on key metrics - Confidence in that impact - Cost to build and maintain - Strategic alignment - Risk
5. Create Feedback Loops
Building what matters requires constant learning:
- Implement robust analytics to track feature usage - Conduct regular user interviews and usability tests - Establish a process for reviewing feature performance - Be willing to remove features that don't deliver value
Case Study: The Power of Focus
Let me share a story from my own experience. I was working with a SaaS company that had a roadmap filled with dozens of features requested by various stakeholders. The team was working at full capacity but struggling to impact key business metrics.
We decided to take a step back and focus exclusively on one problem: user activation. Our data showed that users who completed a specific set of actions in their first week were 5x more likely to become long-term customers.
Rather than building new features, we redesigned the onboarding experience to guide users toward these key actions. We simplified the interface, removed distractions, and added contextual guidance.
The result? Activation rates increased by 62%, which translated to a 31% increase in customer lifetime value. By focusing on what mattered most—getting users to experience the core value of the product quickly—we achieved more impact than the previous year of feature development combined.
The Courage to Say No
Building what matters requires the courage to say no—often to good ideas that simply aren't the most important things to focus on right now.
This isn't easy. Stakeholders will push for their pet features. Sales will promise capabilities to close deals. Competitors will launch shiny new tools that create FOMO.
But the most successful product teams understand that their job isn't to build everything—it's to build the right things. They know that focus is a competitive advantage in a world of endless possibilities.
A Simple Framework for Decision Making
When evaluating what to build, I use a simple framework:
1. Will it solve a real, validated user problem? If not, it doesn't matter how elegant the solution is.
2. Is this problem a priority for our target users? Not all problems are worth solving right now.
3. Does solving this problem align with our business goals? Impact should flow through to key business metrics.
4. Is our solution the simplest way to solve this problem? Complexity should be justified by necessity, not preference.
5. Do we have a clear way to measure success? Without measurement, we can't learn.
If the answer to any of these questions is no, we need to reconsider whether we should build it at all.
Conclusion: Quality Over Quantity
In product development, less is often more. The teams that win aren't those that build the most features—they're the ones that build the features that matter most.
So before you add another item to your roadmap or start your next sprint, ask yourself: Are we building what matters? Or are we just building?
Because at the end of the day, that's all that counts. Build what matters. That's all.