April 8, 2025 • 42 mins
In this episode, we dive into the phenomenon of the "feature factory," where companies focus more on releasing products and features rapidly rather than prioritizing quality or user needs. John Cutler coined the term, and it perfectly captures the feeling many teams face: launching features without a clear understanding of who they’re for or how they impact the business. If this resonates with you, keep listening as we explore how to break free from this cycle.
In our panel discussion, we hear from three product leaders—Aakash Gupta, Andrea Saez, and Paweł Huryn—who share their insights on shifting from output-focused to outcome-driven product development. They offer actionable frameworks for maintaining strategic focus, addressing mid-market pressures, and fostering a culture that values meaningful outcomes over sheer feature volume. Whether you're scaling a business or trying to reignite your team’s creativity, this conversation offers practical advice for escaping the feature factory mindset.
Resources from this episode:
- Subscribe to The Product Manager newsletter
- Connect with Aakash, Paweł, and Andrea on LinkedIn
- Check out The Product Growth Newsletter, The Product Compass Newsletter, and The Product Momentum Gap
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Hannah Clark (00:01):
Feature factory—noun; a company that
consistently releases products,features, and enhancements,
but predominantly focuseson quantity over quality.
Origin, John Cutler.
Used in a sentence, "We'veshipped three new features
this quarter, and I don'tknow who any of them are for.
This is starting to feel likea feature factory." If that
definition hit a little tooclose to home, keep listening.
(00:21):
In our recent panel event, "DoAll Roads Lead to the Feature
Factory?", we brought togetherthree product leaders who
have observed this phenomenonfrom different angles.
Aakash Gupta—who served as VPof Product at a unicorn and is
currently the author of 'TheProduct Growth Newsletter',
Andrea Saez—product marketingleader and author of 'The
Product Momentum Gap', andPaweł Huryn—author of 'The
Product Compass Newsletter'.
They share the uncomfortabletruth about recognizing
(00:43):
output over outcome thinking,practical frameworks for
maintaining strategic focusand mid-market pressures,
and actionable frameworks totransform your team from feature
builders to outcome drivers.
Whether you're trying to scalepast a hundred million ARR
or just reclaim your team'sinnovative spirit, consider this
conversation your punch card outof the feature factory mindset.
Let's jump in.
(01:03):
Oh, by the way, we holdconversations like this
every week, so if thissounds interesting to
you, why not subscribe?
Okay, now let's jump in.
So we're gonna get startedwith our discussion now,
just looking at somepreliminary poll numbers.
It looks like we've got apretty even split between
people who consider theirorganizations to be feature
(01:24):
factories and ones that arenot quite clear on that.
So we'll get into that actuallywith defining the term.
I think that'll be helpfulfor everybody just to get on
the same page of what we meanwhen we say a feature factory.
So the definition wewere using is, I believe,
pull from John Cutleroriginally coined the term.
So a feature factory is acompany that consistently
releases products, features,enhancements, et cetera,
(01:45):
and predominantly focuseson quantity over quality.
So they focus on outputrather than outcomes.
And what we're hinting at thereis that we're in a situation
where we see that we'reshipping a ton of features,
but it isn't always clearwhether the features have a
real strong business value orwhether they really strongly
resonate with our users.
Obviously there's, it canget tied up in some issues.
(02:06):
We'll be covering thisin three sections.
Section one will be why afeature factory is so prevalent.
We'll then move on to sectiontwo, which is the roads that
lead out of the feature factory.
And section three, which is,we're in factory mode, now what?
And we're gonna getstarted with section one.
The first questionhere, I'm gonna pass
it off to Andrea first.
How do well-meaningorganizations become
(02:26):
feature factories?
Like, how does this develop?
Andrea Saez (02:28):
To be honest, there isn't a single path.
People ask me a lot,how do I prevent it?
How do I prevent it?
There's a multiple of pathsthat can take you down that way.
Everything from, just tryingto close sales, you maybe
don't have a good productleader or head of product, or
VP of product, whatever it is.
(02:49):
Could be a hippo thing, couldbe a shiny object syndrome.
There's a lot of differentways to get there, but I think
the underlying, let's say,foundational problem would
be a lack of influence froma product leader to be able
to really set a strategy andsay, this is what we're doing,
this is why we're doing it.
And also just be able to runnegotiations as to when you
(03:13):
do have to ship a featurefor certain reasons, but be
able to then bring the teamback towards the strategy.
I think the reality is, as muchas I would love to stand here
and say we're never gonna dothat, we can, I can absolutely
avoid a feature factory.
There are moments in everybody'scareer, in every company journey
where you might have to makethose concessions and go, fine.
(03:35):
We'll have to build that featurebecause we do have to get that,
revenue in, we need the money.
So it's not, I thinksomething that is just a
black and white situation.
There are negotiations andconcessions that have to be
made, but the important thingis to have a product leader
in place that will be ableto say, okay, we did that.
Now let's bring us back to ourstrategy, to what we're really
trying to do and to solve.
Hannah Clark (03:56):
Aakash, did you have anything
that you wanted to add?
I know that you've got like a,you shared a perspective with
me before that sort of inspiredthis conversation, which is,
it seems like all roads dolead to the feature factory.
What's been yourexperience in the field?
Aakash Gupta (04:07):
Yeah, I think that we tend to say, okay,
there are these awesomecompanies out there.
They're in Silicon Valley,Google, Netflix, Meta, and they
just do product the right way.
And if you just do productlike them, all your
problems will be solved.
You'll hit your metrics, yourbusiness will succeed and
(04:28):
you'll grow in your career.
And then people followthis advice and they
quickly realize that.
There seem to be some gaps here.
And the number one gap thatI've seen is that when I go and
talk to PMs who work at thesecompanies and I say, oh, okay,
what's the biggest featureyou shipped last quarter?
They'll say, oh yeah,it was X and Y. And I'll
say, oh, what was theetymology of that feature?
(04:49):
Like, how did thatfeature get developed?
Who came up with that feature?
Invariably at these bigtech companies, all the
impactful features weredecided by the executive team.
They were heavily debatedfor six months before.
There was no classical PMdiscovery where the PM was
(05:10):
talking to users in a continuousdiscovery process every
two weeks, and they came upwith this brilliant solution
that no executive at Googleor Meta had ever thought
about, and they changed thetrajectory of the company.
That just never happens, andso I think that there is this
sort of over glamorizationof what actually happens at
(05:30):
these companies and in fact appplaces, I would specifically
call it like Apple forinstance, or even Snapchat.
Snapchat CEO, Evan Spiegel wasrecently on a bunch of podcasts.
There's a couple designersand the CEO who are
dictating like everything.
It's like a purefeature factory.
And so people I think probablyover glamorize this and in fact
(05:50):
many roads do lead to a featurefactory-like environment.
If not for all the time,like Andrea was emphasizing
some of the times, some ofthe time there might be a
sales demand, there might bea customer success demand,
there might be something.
So we all need to learnhow we can handle ourselves
when we're in thatfeature factory situation.
Andrea Saez (06:09):
Can I be slightly controversial
since I was asked to becontroversial before this call?
I do a hundred percent agreewith everything that Aakash
has said, but one thing thatI feel is really important
to understand is that thosecompanies that Aakash has called
out very fairly have the budgetto be able to do those things.
They can release to learnor release, just to see what
(06:31):
happens because they canreabsorb that risk back in.
Most companies do nothave the budget for that.
So when they try to operatelike Google or Apple or whatever
and just go, just ship it.
Just ship it, right?
There's this what was it?
Facebook saying Movefast and break things.
Worst thing that you can dobecause you're not Facebook
let's be super real about that.
Most people don't work at afang, and if they do, then
(06:53):
they're in that situation thatAakash is describing, but they
can afford to do those things.
I can't afford to do thosethings, so I have to just
play a little bit smarter.
Hannah Clark (07:02):
Okay.
So I think that we have aview now of how these things
can develop, who can getaway with it, who can't.
If we're thinking about iton, a spectrum of good to bad,
is being a feature factoryinherently a bad thing, or can
it sometimes work dependingon the business model?
Would you say that there's arealistic, viable alternative?
Paweł Huryn (07:24):
Yeah, I do not fully agree with the framing
that we need to make someconcessions always when we
choose to talk to stakeholdersabout features or just to
implement features or reviewfeature requests from the
users because first someproblems are not brainer.
So if we get a picture from thestakeholders and for example,
we need a Stripe integration.
(07:45):
Then we need aStripe integration.
We can, of course, we cantry to pretend and reverse
engineering it into the financeproblem, but in some cases,
this discovering the problemspace, exploring the problem
space isn't that necessarily.
And in other cases, stakeholdersmight have insights like
executives or sales or customersuccess that product manager
(08:06):
talking to the users might miss.
So I also don't like discardingthose insights completely.
I have seen many productmanagers who just came to
the new organization andstart talking to users.
There was no existingknowledge in organization,
but many stakeholders spenthundreds of hours with
the customers every month.
So discarding what theyknow is for me is a waste.
(08:28):
And also, at the end of the day,businesses need to make money.
So for some companies doing,for example, if they work in the
customer supplier model, doingwhat customers ask for, even
if product managers or productteams are not happy, this is
a viable way to make money.
So in that case, we can justleave the company rather than
(08:50):
trying to change it becausethis is their business model.
Hannah Clark (08:52):
Yeah, and it's a fair point.
That's the other side of thecoin is if it works, if it's
keeping the business afloat.
So sometimes that's justhow the cookie crumbles.
We'll throw it backto Andrea right away.
We're gonna move into sectiontwo, which is the roads that
lead out of the feature factory.
So it's abandoned sort of themoral question or kind of the,
is it good or bad questionand just talk about evaluating
(09:13):
whether an organization wouldbe considered a feature factory.
So how do we know if ourorg is over investing
in short term and underinvesting in long-term value?
Where's that balance?
Andrea Saez (09:22):
I think that the first science to that just
comes down to are you receivinga ton of negative feedback?
Are you seeing high churn?
Are sales cycles taking longer?
Those are indicators thatyou're probably slipping on your
product market fit a little bit.
And that is usually the momentwhen those decisions of, oh,
let's just ship this thing.
(09:43):
Let's just build this thing,start happening in an attempt
to try and save certain accountsor try to close certain deals.
And that's when things startspinning outta control.
And then you start.
Seeing, I'm not even gonnaname certain tools, Jira.
Yeah.
You know this, youhave all these features
like do they connect?
Does it make sense?
Is it for your audience?
(10:03):
Does the UX make sensefor the love of God, Jira?
What are we doing?
Can people easily navigatethrough UI, et cetera.
But generally it's whenyou start seeing that kinda
product market fit, startto divulge a little bit,
and it's not as strong asperhaps it used to be before.
Hannah Clark (10:18):
Let's talk a little bit about
early intervention.
So if we're starting to stray alittle bit, what kinds of checks
and balances could we implementjust to frame the context of
who I'm asking this question to.
We discussed before that thereis limited influence at certain
levels of product managementwhere you can't necessarily
influence the direction ofthe company depending on
(10:40):
the maturity of the company.
There's a lot of factors,but assuming that you're in a
position where you've got somesignificant influence in the
company's trajectory, what kindsof early inventions or checks
and balances can we implementto really remain focused on
delivering value and stayingtrue to our company's vision?
Paweł, do you wannatake this one?
Paweł Huryn (10:56):
I will start by aligning about what is the
important, what is our strategyfor the entire organization?
Because if there are, if theteams are not aligned about how
we create value, what customersdo we want to solve, what
problems we want to tackle.
What is different about what weare building then it might be
extremely difficult to delivervalue by, by different teams.
So first is the strategicalignment and choices that
(11:18):
we make so that everyone isaware of the strategic context.
This is what in no rules.
Yeah.
Netflix calls withcontext not control.
And then another thing wouldbe aligning teams around
the objectives so thateveryone understands what
is the most important thing.
In the organization orwhat are the most important
objectives in the organization?
(11:40):
For example, in the quarteror nah, during the year so
that the teams can align theteam objectives or department
objectives with those keypriorities for the organization.
And then there is an empowermentthat might require coaching
because not every product teamnecessarily knows how to perform
continuous product discovery.
But broadly speaking, wewould like to by default,
(12:03):
not in every situationbecause there are exceptions.
But by default we wouldlike to empower teams with
meaningful problems to solveclear desired outcomes so
that they can either, they candiscover how to solve those
problems and create value forthe customers, and ultimately
create value for the business.
That would be it.
So starting from strategyand and in with empowering
(12:24):
teams so that they can startthis discovery process.
Hannah Clark (12:27):
Yeah, something that kind of feels
relevant to add to that.
I recently had a conversationwith Cem Kansu from Duolingo,
who's the CPO of Duolingo,and we talked a little bit
about some of the ways thatDuolingo thinks about vision and
values and that kind of thing.
And they, at their company,they have some sacred cows
that they've as a company,agreed that we don't touch
this or we, we don't makeany changes to this specific
(12:48):
area of our business 'causeit's just core to who we are.
And that becomes like acompass for how they make
some of the decisions andwhat decisions they say no to.
So I thought that wasan interesting way to
approach that as well.
Paweł Huryn (12:59):
So try those are extremely essential.
So not just things that wewould like to focus on, but
also things really stated.
Things that we don't do,customers we don't serve for.
Yeah.
Issues that, strategiesthat we don't implement so
that everyone can avoid it.
Hannah Clark (13:13):
Before I move on to section three, did we have
anything else from paneliststhat wanted to add checks and
balances or early interventionsto ensure that we're staying
away from feature factory mode?
Aakash Gupta (13:23):
I think feature factory is a pejorative, right?
You don't want to be in thefeature factory, but if we break
down what are the elements ofthe feature factory that are
gonna be most destructive.
The number one thing thatyou can do in a business is
not actually focus on theright part of the business.
So getting your executive teamto focus on the parts, the
(13:45):
metrics, the user problemsthat actually matter.
That is I think always the areathat has the highest leverage.
And so it's aboutbringing in insights.
That establish yourcredibility along the way.
And I typically think about twotypes of insights that I want
to be bringing to like almostany of these conversations
that I have with executives.
(14:05):
I wanna have some user insights,hopefully substantiated by,
session replays, user analytics,data conversations, or ideally
call recordings that I have ofconversations with customers.
Then actual data insights,like usually around a growth
model or a size of opportunity.
For example, did youknow that 16% of our
(14:27):
customers haven't done Y?
If we get just 50% of thosecustomers to do that, it
could lead to x milliondollars in revenue, right?
If you come with a sort ofthese two types of insights
to executives, you're gonnastart being able to sculpt,
focusing on the right metricsand the right problems.
That's the first point.
That's what Paweł wassaying with strategy.
(14:47):
And then the second point isyou want to allow your teams
on the ground, your designersand PMs, as they're actually
prototyping, as they'reactually putting mocks in
front of users to iterate andchange direction from what
the executives had in mind.
And so to do that, I findthat implementing checkpoints.
Product review meetings whereexecutives still feel like
(15:10):
they have a say along the way.
What you don't want isthe executives hand you
a design at planning.
Three months later, you sendthem the future results,
write up that it didn'twork, and they say, you
didn't implement my design.
That's why it didn't work.
I. In those three months,you wanna bring them along
with several product reviews.
Your design was put in frontof users, we improved your
design for X and y reasons.
(15:31):
That's what weactually launched.
And so those to me, arethe two really important
leverage points to add onsome tactics to the high level
strategy that Paweł gave.
Hannah Clark (15:41):
That's really valuable insight.
Before we move on, doesanyone wanna respond to that?
Andrea Saez (15:46):
I don't think I would say anything different.
I completely agree.
I'm not gonna becontroversial on this one.
I think both Aakashand Paweł are a hundred
percent right on that.
The only thing I wouldadd is, as you're gaining
alignment, make sure thatthere is alignment, right?
That's one of the things whereI see a lot of team fails is
they'll say yes, and then a weeklater everybody's running around
(16:08):
trying to do their own thing.
So absolutelyexecutive alignment.
It has to start from the top.
Everybody needs to be alignedaround what you're doing, why
you're doing, how you're doingit, who you're doing it for,
and the who tends to be thebiggest source of misalignment
because everybody's tryingto, there's no lying around
the ICP, so everyone's tryingto sell to someone different.
(16:28):
And when you're trying to sellto different audiences, that's
when you start sneaking infeatures that perhaps don't fit.
Hannah Clark (16:34):
In regard to question number two,
as in shortsighted featuredevelopment, is it also true
that sometimes companiesrelease features that are
disconnected from the pathto vision realization with
a full intention to circleback and refine the features?
However, once a company thatgets into the feature factory
spiral, it's then tough to getoutta that cycle and then it
just never manages to returnto suboptimal features that
were originally intended to beimproved, like a, feature debt.
(16:58):
Does anyone have anythingthey wanted to respond?
Paweł Huryn (17:01):
I assume that this is about releasing
features that are not idealor far from perfect, at least
in my experience, this isexactly what we should do.
So release features withoutimplementing every possible
detail, every corner usecase, but rather do something
that solves the problem formaybe 70, maybe 80% of the
users for the most common usecases and just get feedback.
(17:22):
Of course, sometimes it mightnot be possible, but in most
cases, in most of the productorganizations I worked in.
We started simple.
Even if there was somedesign or idea, what we would
like to achieve in four orfive months, we quickly got
feedback from the users.
And also often after gettingthis feedback, we improved our
(17:43):
initial assumptions becauseeven if you test your designs,
you run those usability testsand you interview customers,
you automate those tests.
And for example,I did it with Mac.
The actual results fromproduction when customers
start using the realdata might be different.
So I'm 100% for releasingfeatures that are not ideal.
Hannah Clark (18:06):
I wanna toss it to Andrea a little bit
because, so how does thatfit into the strategy?
'cause you mentioned, inyour organization you don't
necessarily have the budgetto release features at that
rate, and you have to be morestrategic about what you do.
So do you have a differentapproach or how do you see that?
Andrea Saez (18:21):
No, I agree with what Paweł said.
You should be releasingwith intention, right?
Not everything needs to beperfect, I think, I don't wanna
make assumptions, but Todd saidhalf-baked and I think that is
something I have seen beforewhere we release something
and say, okay, we'll getback to improving this later.
And then you just moveon to more new stuff.
But the teams don't goback to make improvements.
(18:42):
And I see Aakash noddinga lot, so maybe you
have a bit to add there.
But that is a little bitof that feature trap where
it's let's just release new.
And then we don't go backand make improvements to
what sometimes feels likevery basic stuff, like
some basic usability stuff.
Where we assume that people willjust get it because it's there,
so go figure it out type thing.
Aakash Gupta (19:03):
Yeah, I think that all our commenters are
right I think Brent, Todd, bothare pointing to this phenomena
that happens, which is why thefeature factory is so bad, is we
have this shiny object syndromerelease, half-baked features.
We never fix the featuresafterwards or update them
even though we know a bunch ofthings because we're just moving
(19:24):
on to the next shiny object.
That's one of the thingsyou wanna avoid, right?
And so when people are thenasking, I think Agua asks like,
how do you move out of this?
So when people havethat syndrome it's about
bring those user insightthat, hey, user insight.
We looked at a hundredsession replays last week.
Three people clicked onthis feature data insight,
(19:49):
like of people who youclick on this feature, the
30 day retention is 7%.
It's like nobody's adoptingthis feature and nobody's
retaining with this feature.
You try to bring those insightsto the executives and the
feature factory leaders, thehippos driving the feature
factory, and because you'respeaking their language now
(20:09):
and you've brought theseinsights, hopefully they will
allow you to either iterateso it's not half baked.
Oftentimes if we're talkingabout a 7% adoption, like
actually get people to seethe thing and try it out.
But there also seem tobe a retention problem,
so fix whatever retentionissues there are.
So that's one optionor the second.
And often what peoplereally need to do is just
kill features, right?
(20:29):
There's way too many featuresout there that are actually
getting in the way of the corejob to be done of your user.
And this is particularlypernicious in B2B where
we all try to becomeplatform companies.
We all try to extendbeyond one product.
As soon as we hit 10million ARR, we think we
need a second product.
But in fact, like just focusingon that core often is so much
more high impact for you.
Andrea Saez (20:51):
I think it was Pendo that did a study that said
80% of features don't get used.
There's a huge number.
Hannah Clark (20:58):
That's wild.
I think a fitting segueinto our final section
here, which is, so we arein factory mode, now what?
I imagine that a lot of folksdecided to tune in today
because they're either alreadyworking in what they would
consider to be a featurefactory, or they're concerned
that you're increasinglygoing off of the deep end.
So let's assume thatchanging that model, at
(21:20):
least in the short term, isimpossible or it's a very
goal just because of the waythat things are currently
working in the entrenchedinfrastructure of the company.
Are there any kind of steps thatwe can take from a leadership
perspective to get back awayfrom the future factory mindset
and become more value focused.
Aakash Gupta (21:38):
If you're the leader, then it's actually
incumbent upon you, right?
So if you're the VP of product,you're the chief product
officer, you're whatevertitle that it is, if you're
that top person, right?
Fundamentally, if you'redoing your job well,
you're always calling outall of the deficiencies
in your organization,all of the problems that
you guys need to fix.
That's actually the job.
(21:59):
It's not to like tootlike, we are so amazing.
We launch all theseamazing things.
It's like you're there to solveproblems for the company, so you
should be trying to call out.
These are the big problems,and the feature factory is
actually one of those ones thatpeople are pretty responsive.
You know what you do isyou say, okay, hey guys.
What was yourstrategy last year?
What were all of the featuresthat we committed to building
(22:21):
and how did those perform?
How many of them succeeded?
And you take a look atthat and you say, okay,
75% of them didn't succeed.
Is that what we wantto do this year?
If not right, how are wegonna break chip away at that?
How are we gonnabreak that down?
And so again, you'respeaking their language.
You're not saying,Hey, Marty Kagan says I
need to empower my PMs.
(22:42):
And that's what's broken aboutour product management process.
Marty is right about that.
But you're speaking thelanguage of the stakeholders.
So you're taking what youlearned from Marty and you're
bringing it to the stakeholders.
And so that to me is the jobof a great VP of product.
And I think Andrew said itin her very first response.
It's like what's led to thisfeature factory is the lack
of a great VP of product or agreat chief product officer.
(23:06):
I would also say though,sometimes founders especially,
but some CEOs, they're just hardto work with and you can have
the best VP of product ever andthe founder CEO is just gonna
force things down anyways.
And if you're in that scenario,you need to think about
playing chess with your careerand going somewhere else.
Andrea Saez (23:24):
I was actually gonna say exactly that.
You can be the best CPO, thebest VP of product, you can
do or try to do all the rightthings, if you don't have
the support of your CEO andthe rest of the C level, you
are not gonna get anywhere.
It's just, it'snot gonna happen.
There has to be alignment,like I said, at that C
level because once there'sreal alignment there, then
(23:45):
everything's a lot easier.
And I have worked with CPOswhere they had absolutely
no influence and it wasreally sales that was driving
development, not the CPO.
The other thing I would add tothat is having alignment and
understanding around measurableuser behaviors, and that's
obviously part of my book.
But a lot of features thatare built don't focus on
(24:09):
repeatable, scalable behaviors.
So things that people aregonna come in and do every
single day because they'reindispensable to the user.
Sometimes features are justput out to ship, right?
But are they really thinkingabout the value to the customer?
Is it actually gonna helpthem solve a problem?
Or are we putting outa feature that's making
their lives harder?
(24:30):
And maybe there's like awhole ethics chat there as
well of, how does it impactthe life and the behavior and
the workflows of the user.
Paweł Huryn (24:37):
I agree with everything what
has been said so far.
I cannot add also from theperspective of a product
manager, product team thatdon't have this influence
in the organization.
It's also often possible to movethings in the right direction.
Obviously you won't to changethe entire organization,
how the organization works.
But for example, in the past Iwas able, I work at bc, which
(24:59):
is a resource center for morethan 30 banks from Denmark.
My initiative was the onlyinitiative that escaped safe, so
scale agile framework, which is,for me, it's like a waterfall
with this long term planning.
So how we did thatwas we analyzed the
previous initiatives.
We tried to highlightthe problems.
(25:22):
So like in the case of CPO,just from the product manager
perspective, show the problemsand measure the problems with
the current approach and thatif we are going to continue,
one of the most complexinitiatives will probably fail
like all the previous ones.
And we suggested an experimentsso that our initiative, so that
was one core team and four otherthat collaborated with us, just
(25:45):
started working in an agile waywithout this heavy framework.
So the same argumentsand it worked.
Obviously we didn't changethe entire organization,
but for my initiativeit worked pretty well.
Hannah Clark (25:58):
Yeah, I really appreciate you chiming in
with the perspective of folkswho have a little bit less
influence, 'cause I'm sure thatthere are folks who are finding
themselves in that positionwhere they're not necessarily
a VP of product, but, youstill wanna try and make your
work as impactful as possible.
Paweł Huryn (26:10):
Can also influence a lot of things
that are inside your team.
So just don't askabout permission and
start collaboratingwith your designers.
Inviting your engineers tobrainstorm about solutions
and rather than preparingeverything kind upfront,
talking to the customers alone.
Andrea Saez (26:26):
One thing that I'd like to add, if possible, that
Paweł I think has brought up ishow much hard work that entails.
And I was amazed whenyou said that, what
you were just talking.
I was like, how did he do that?
Because it is a lot of hardwork and I, most of the time
in my career have a life warwith Aakash, where it's I'm
not gonna bother with this timeto find a new job type thing.
(26:50):
But it is really difficult todo a transformation like that.
So power to anyone that cando that or is going through
that because it is draining toyour wellbeing, to your mental
health, to your everyday.
But I think you once, or ifyou're able to get out of that
on the other side, there'sa lot of learning as well.
Hannah Clark (27:10):
Yeah, that's definitely an incredible
trajectory to be able tobring into whatever experience
you have next, whether youstay at the company or not.
If you wanna follow ourspeakers also today, each
one of these folks areamazing thought leaders.
We've got a lot of greatcontent from each of them.
Andrea's book, theProduct Momentum Gap
is available on Amazon.
You can look it up there.
Aakash's newsletter, theProduct Growth Newsletter.
(27:32):
So make sure yousubscribe to that.
It's a fantastic resource.
And Paweł's newsletter iscalled Product Compass.
Aakash and Paweł havecollaborated on some podcasts,
but I know Aakash is reallyactive on his podcast as well.
Please make sure you subscribeto our panelists stuff 'cause
they're putting out great stuffall the time, not just today.
And I guess we can moveright along into our Q&A.
(27:53):
We've got some great questionsfrom our audience today.
The first one hereis from Aqueda.
I hope I pronouncedthat correctly.
So how do we get fromfeature factory to continuous
user and customer valuecreation that creates
positive business impact?
I feel we've touched onthis a little bit, but maybe
there's some stuff to add.
She says seems like thecustomer value piece of the
equation has been obfuscatedby a quick profit result.
(28:14):
Andrea, if you wanna givemaybe Cliffs notes of what
you cover in the book,that might be helpful.
Andrea Saez (28:18):
Literally that.
So it is about bringingtogether product strategy
and customer value.
So we talk a lot about customervalue, how to identify it,
how to track it, how to focuson it, how to bring your
team together, and I thinkthat's a really key part.
So we have a little templatecalled the product VCP or the
product Value creation plan.
(28:39):
The key part that's reallyimportant, something that
Paweł touched on earlier isthat it's really not about
the product team makingthose decisions in isolation.
It's about listening to sales.
It's about listeningto customer success.
It's about listening tosupport and bringing all those
key stakeholders into thisworkshop and collaborating
with them and understandingthen what value means in
(29:00):
order to then deliver it.
Hannah Clark (29:02):
Actually, if you want a taste of that,
we discussed exactly that onthe podcast about a year ago.
So the podcast episodeon the Product Manager
podcast was how productleaders are unintentionally
hindering business growth.
Okay, so nextquestion from Parker.
So what tools slash methodsdo you use to foster strategic
discussions and alignmentaround a common product goal?
What has been mosteffective for you?
(29:23):
This is interesting, so alittle bit more tactical here.
Does anyone wannajump in on this one?
Aakash Gupta (29:27):
If we're trying to create alignment on a particular
goal, the first thing to dois not to just suggest this
is what the right answer is.
Here you go.
Let's go for it.
Ideally, you want to setup this context with the
people who're not haven'tbrought along and say, Hey,
I think we may not have theright goal at this point.
(29:48):
Can we go through a processtogether where we try to
figure out the right goal?
Then you wanna set upthis process in a very
collaborative way.
What I like to do is actuallylike work with an analyst
or somebody who's super wellrespected by both parties,
some external third party andsay, Hey, can we get some sort
of like research report orsomething going and you present
(30:11):
that to us and then we can talkback and ask questions to you
so that you're learning with thepeople who you disagree with.
You're learning about themetrics and the options,
then you have some sort of abrainstorm, a setup, brainstorm.
Often do it overlike Miro, remotely.
It doesn't need to be in person.
Like these are the optionalmetrics and goals that
we could be focused on.
What are the pros andcons of these options?
(30:33):
Let's talk about these together,and then as the PM using the
power of the pen to record now.
Okay.
These are the options.
These are the pros and cons.
Again, going back to yourthird party person now and
working with them, who's sayingokay, the data science team
has gone and looked at this.
We have gone and looked at this.
We've involved some of the PMs,designers and engineers who have
been building on this for thelast six months as well, to get
(30:55):
their feedback on what metricsare easy to move versus not.
And then you have a finaldiscussion where it's like.
Again, you're not comingin with the right answer.
You're willing to even hearout what the other person
says, but you guys make adecision in that meeting.
So that's how I like tostructure it very tactically
for folks, is a sequence ofthings, and it takes longer
this way, but hopefullyyou have more buy-in.
Hannah Clark (31:17):
I always leave it to you to give
like a very clear, specificprocess, so I appreciate that.
We'll move on to Mikayla.
We have a revamp request fora product by the business
and from the UX team.
We wanna properly understandthe pain points, gain insights,
and understand the journeys.
So far, it's been a featurefactory and it's disconnected
because we use many systems tostitch together the UI, but the
PM is pushing to do somethingquick because we already know
(31:38):
things, quote unquote, butthere's not clear direction.
What do you think is agood way to get out of it?
Okay, so this is a veryspecific situation, so let's
just note the facts here.
So we have all these insights,but they seem to be disconnected
from the features thatyou're actually developing.
And the PM is just looking tojust do speed over quality.
It sounds like, Mikayla,you'll have to correct me
(31:58):
if I'm getting any of thedetails of this incorrect.
So it sounds like we've gota number of different issues.
Insights are disconnected fromwhat's actually being built
and PM is, doesn't seem tobe making that connection.
Paweł Huryn (32:10):
In this case, in this situation, it's product
manager who is pushing featureswithout proper validation.
So that might be difficult,but overall, if someone is
pushing features, I wouldtry to reverse engineer and
ask about the problem thisfeature is solving, and then
explore, validate the problemand maybe the rather solutions.
I would also like to understandif this problem is aligned
(32:32):
with the broader objectivesthat are currently important
for the organization andstrategy and company vision.
Perhaps someone from the teamother than product manager
can try to reverse engineeror at least maybe, if not
everything, then find someinconsistencies between data,
between what analytics, whatdata analytics funnels cohort
(32:52):
analysis presents and thefeatures that we are building.
There must be some set ofassumptions behind those
features that I would like tovalidate those assumptions.
Andrea Saez (33:01):
I agree with Paweł.
There's two magic questions.
What problem are wetrying to solve and why?
And also who we'resolving it for.
'cause don't forget about thewho, but yeah I've been in a
situation like that recentlyand the product team just
wanted to ship because theyknew what they were doing
and I just went in and said,Hey, I don't wanna disrupt.
But I'm just wondering if youcan explain the problem to
me and the decision makingprocess so that I understand it.
(33:25):
Because as a product marketer,I need to sell this and I need
to understand the value, and Ineed to understand the decision
making process and just gettingthem to work through that logic.
It's this little productproblem outline where you
can just ask what problemare you trying to solve?
Why for whom?
What's the business impact?
What's the customervalue we're delivering?
And talk through that logic andthat can help steer the boat
(33:46):
with a little bit of influenceand really get the team to think
about like why are they doingthings at the end of the day?
Hannah Clark (33:52):
Yeah, taking them to task or, I think
that's a great suggestion.
We have some more questionscoming in, so in the name
of time we'll move in, but Ithink that was a great chat.
Thank you for asking Mikayla.
Okay.
Brent has our nextquestion here.
In an ideal situation, shoulda company or product become
less of a feature factory asit matures potentially, can
this trend be a signal ofmisapplication of product teams?
Andrea Saez (34:14):
Who's got thoughts?
Hannah, I wanna hear yours.
Hannah Clark (34:17):
I'm an outsider here really, but it
seems to me that a companyshould become, they should
be the least of featurefactory at the beginning.
When you really have aspecific goal that you're
trying to achieve and aspecific user problem that
you're trying to solve.
Kind of seems to me that youbecome a, like the feature
factory creeps in as youmake concessions in order
to keep your business alive.
(34:38):
And so it seems to meit is something that a
scaling business is gonnarun into a lot more.
But full disclosure, like I havenot been in the position to have
to deal with these concerns.
I don't know.
Fact, check me.
Aakash Gupta (34:52):
I think they're probably like roughly equivalent
percentages at all life stages.
Sometimes when you're reallyearly on, you feel like, okay,
all we need to do is justlike copy this other product.
Just like fully copy it.
Know?
Like, so everything is clear.
Like it's just a future factor.
Like you guys, you'rejust gonna go build
gong's, call recorder now.
Just go build that now.
Don't you have the exactroadmap right there?
(35:14):
Can't you just see it?
So I think that futurefactory, they can, it
can hit in anywhere.
Really though, what you want tothink about, regardless of what
environment you are in, is whatare the parts of the feature
factory that are hurting me.
And from that, it's reallyam I not able to deliver
an ROI on my salary?
If I'm being paid $150,000,like an average pm, am
(35:38):
I generating $150,000 aprofit for the company?
Because if I'm not, thenthe future factor is really
becoming a problem for me,and I need to start to fix
those areas one by one.
And so in terms of the sociologyof what percentage there
are, I personally think thatthey're probably everywhere.
You'll see really good companiesthat are huge, like Enterprise,
(35:59):
like I think Meta is an examplethat a lot of people hold
up where Hey, PMs, they'reactually empowered to do stuff.
But then there's alsoseries C companies.
There's series A companies.
I think even what I washearing is the recent OpenAI
launch of image generation.
Like it wasn't like a Samsaid we need to ship a much
better image generation today.
It was like.
The researchers andengineers working at OpenAI
(36:21):
uncovered these new thingsand they brought them up.
So there's even open eyestage $300 billion companies
that are doing great.
So at every stage you'llfind a similar proportion,
which is like more than50% feature factory.
Hannah Clark (36:33):
So I'll move on to Sahi.
What are some of the valueadded benefits that a product
manager coming from a businessand technical hybrid background
brings to the table versus apurely technical background
product manager when itcomes to features and design?
Andrea Saez (36:46):
I do think that there is a link in that.
I could be a hundred percentwrong in this, but in my
very biased experience,purely technical PMs tend
to lack business focus, andat the end of the day, we're
all building stuff to self.
I'm not suggesting everyoneshould be a hundred percent
ROI focused, but just havingthat sense of we are building
(37:09):
something that needs to besold and how do our decisions
impact the business andour ROI and all of that.
PMs with a business backgroundwill understand that from the
beginning and their decisionswill be targeted that way,
whereas sometimes technical camsare just like focused on the
technical side of things, butnot necessarily worried about.
(37:30):
That return on investmentor what that looks like.
A really great example of thisis I've been in situations where
we're talking about buildinga particular feature or I'm
jumping in at a point where thishas already been done and I'm
jumping in at the end and myfirst question will be, have we
thought about how we sell this?
And everyone's whoa, nope.
I'm like that should havebeen the first question.
(37:51):
How are we selling it?
Who are we selling it to?
If you're a B2B and youhave everything from like an
individual to an enterprisepackage, is the feature
that you're building setup to take the customer
through that journey?
Because an enterprise customeris not gonna have the same
problem as an individual ina pre-seed startup wanting to
use your product, and not alot of people might go through.
(38:15):
That thought process.
If they don't have thatbusiness background,
that could be biased.
I could be wrong.
So feel free tocorrect me on that.
Hannah Clark (38:22):
Does anyone feel the need the right?
Aakash Gupta (38:24):
Yeah I think he's just trying to ask, like
he probably has a technicalbusiness background and he is
comparing himself to peoplewith a purely technical
background and wondering likewhat advantage can he bring?
He spent a lot of timetalking about impact, right?
In today's conversation,the impact of your work.
And so I think if you havea business background, try
to think about leading onthose types of PM skills.
(38:46):
Build the growth model foryour team, impact size all your
features, write really greatfeature results, write-ups.
So always try to play toyour strengths and don't
worry so much about whatother people are doing.
It's up to those technical PMsto learn the business skills.
To be honest, they're not thathard, so most technical PMs can
learn them pretty easily and.
(39:07):
Just focus on yourself, likehow do I leverage my strengths?
If I'm really strong in Excel,do more Excel stuff as a pm.
That's the magic of the PM roleis you can make it your own.
Andrea Saez (39:16):
A hundred percent agree with that.
Hannah Clark (39:18):
Todd has said, Paweł, you mentioned
earlier that you'd liketo keep all insights.
At what point do you turninsights into backlog items?
Our backlog feels likethe feature factory floor.
We recommend archivingbacklog items that are
older than 12 months.
Paweł, would you mindjust responding to that
question so that otherscan take away from it?
Paweł Huryn (39:33):
So first I'm not sure I really mentioned
keeping all the insights.
So what I might have mentionedis leveraging insights
from different sources.
So not just customer interviews,but also stakeholders,
market research, dataanalytics, surveys, and so on.
So this is the first thing,and when it comes to organizing
(39:55):
insights and product backlogitems, I have always avoided
placing user stories or featuresin the product backlog for
the developers prematurely.
So I would rather completethe discovery, share the
designs, test the keyassumptions, and share our
findings with the organization.
And only after we getenough confidence than split
(40:18):
it into user stories andfind with the team or user
stories or other formativesomeone uses something else.
So it's like havingtwo backlogs though.
It doesn't have tobe the same tool.
It can be just Miro orsome other visual tool to
collect those insights andconnect them to user needs.
When it comes to a hiding,there was another question
(40:40):
I would typically just getread are hi and height.
So all the items that aresitting in the backlog for
too long because it's, ifthe product backlog has
more than let's say 8,100elements it's not manageable.
So this, in my experiencewill never be tackled, and
if they are important, theywill be bring up again.
Hannah Clark (40:59):
Thank you for everyone for joining.
And of course, a huge thankyou to our panelists for
volunteering their time today.
So panelists, thank you somuch, Aakash, Andrea, Paweł.
It was really fun.
Very informative session.
I just want to thankeverybody for participating
in our event today and beingsuch an engaged audience.
We hope to see you next time.
Thanks for listening in.
(41:20):
For more great insights,how-to guides and tool reviews,
subscribe to our newsletter attheproductmanager.com/subscribe.
You can hear more conversationslike this by subscribing to
the Product Manager whereveryou get your podcasts.
Feature factory—noun; a company that
consistently releases products,features, and enhancements,
but predominantly focuseson quantity over quality.
Origin, John Cutler.
Used in a sentence, "We'veshipped three new features
this quarter, and I don'tknow who any of them are for.
This is starting to feel likea feature factory." If that
definition hit a little tooclose to home, keep listening.
(00:21):
In our recent panel event, "DoAll Roads Lead to the Feature
Factory?", we brought togetherthree product leaders who
have observed this phenomenonfrom different angles.
Aakash Gupta—who served as VPof Product at a unicorn and is
currently the author of 'TheProduct Growth Newsletter',
Andrea Saez—product marketingleader and author of 'The
Product Momentum Gap', andPaweł Huryn—author of 'The
Product Compass Newsletter'.
They share the uncomfortabletruth about recognizing
(00:43):
output over outcome thinking,practical frameworks for
maintaining strategic focusand mid-market pressures,
and actionable frameworks totransform your team from feature
builders to outcome drivers.
Whether you're trying to scalepast a hundred million ARR
or just reclaim your team'sinnovative spirit, consider this
conversation your punch card outof the feature factory mindset.
Let's jump in.
(01:03):
Oh, by the way, we holdconversations like this
every week, so if thissounds interesting to
you, why not subscribe?
Okay, now let's jump in.
So we're gonna get startedwith our discussion now,
just looking at somepreliminary poll numbers.
It looks like we've got apretty even split between
people who consider theirorganizations to be feature
(01:24):
factories and ones that arenot quite clear on that.
So we'll get into that actuallywith defining the term.
I think that'll be helpfulfor everybody just to get on
the same page of what we meanwhen we say a feature factory.
So the definition wewere using is, I believe,
pull from John Cutleroriginally coined the term.
So a feature factory is acompany that consistently
releases products, features,enhancements, et cetera,
(01:45):
and predominantly focuseson quantity over quality.
So they focus on outputrather than outcomes.
And what we're hinting at thereis that we're in a situation
where we see that we'reshipping a ton of features,
but it isn't always clearwhether the features have a
real strong business value orwhether they really strongly
resonate with our users.
Obviously there's, it canget tied up in some issues.
(02:06):
We'll be covering thisin three sections.
Section one will be why afeature factory is so prevalent.
We'll then move on to sectiontwo, which is the roads that
lead out of the feature factory.
And section three, which is,we're in factory mode, now what?
And we're gonna getstarted with section one.
The first questionhere, I'm gonna pass
it off to Andrea first.
How do well-meaningorganizations become
(02:26):
feature factories?
Like, how does this develop?
Andrea Saez (02:28):
To be honest, there isn't a single path.
People ask me a lot,how do I prevent it?
How do I prevent it?
There's a multiple of pathsthat can take you down that way.
Everything from, just tryingto close sales, you maybe
don't have a good productleader or head of product, or
VP of product, whatever it is.
(02:49):
Could be a hippo thing, couldbe a shiny object syndrome.
There's a lot of differentways to get there, but I think
the underlying, let's say,foundational problem would
be a lack of influence froma product leader to be able
to really set a strategy andsay, this is what we're doing,
this is why we're doing it.
And also just be able to runnegotiations as to when you
(03:13):
do have to ship a featurefor certain reasons, but be
able to then bring the teamback towards the strategy.
I think the reality is, as muchas I would love to stand here
and say we're never gonna dothat, we can, I can absolutely
avoid a feature factory.
There are moments in everybody'scareer, in every company journey
where you might have to makethose concessions and go, fine.
(03:35):
We'll have to build that featurebecause we do have to get that,
revenue in, we need the money.
So it's not, I thinksomething that is just a
black and white situation.
There are negotiations andconcessions that have to be
made, but the important thingis to have a product leader
in place that will be ableto say, okay, we did that.
Now let's bring us back to ourstrategy, to what we're really
trying to do and to solve.
Hannah Clark (03:56):
Aakash, did you have anything
that you wanted to add?
I know that you've got like a,you shared a perspective with
me before that sort of inspiredthis conversation, which is,
it seems like all roads dolead to the feature factory.
What's been yourexperience in the field?
Aakash Gupta (04:07):
Yeah, I think that we tend to say, okay,
there are these awesomecompanies out there.
They're in Silicon Valley,Google, Netflix, Meta, and they
just do product the right way.
And if you just do productlike them, all your
problems will be solved.
You'll hit your metrics, yourbusiness will succeed and
(04:28):
you'll grow in your career.
And then people followthis advice and they
quickly realize that.
There seem to be some gaps here.
And the number one gap thatI've seen is that when I go and
talk to PMs who work at thesecompanies and I say, oh, okay,
what's the biggest featureyou shipped last quarter?
They'll say, oh yeah,it was X and Y. And I'll
say, oh, what was theetymology of that feature?
(04:49):
Like, how did thatfeature get developed?
Who came up with that feature?
Invariably at these bigtech companies, all the
impactful features weredecided by the executive team.
They were heavily debatedfor six months before.
There was no classical PMdiscovery where the PM was
(05:10):
talking to users in a continuousdiscovery process every
two weeks, and they came upwith this brilliant solution
that no executive at Googleor Meta had ever thought
about, and they changed thetrajectory of the company.
That just never happens, andso I think that there is this
sort of over glamorizationof what actually happens at
(05:30):
these companies and in fact appplaces, I would specifically
call it like Apple forinstance, or even Snapchat.
Snapchat CEO, Evan Spiegel wasrecently on a bunch of podcasts.
There's a couple designersand the CEO who are
dictating like everything.
It's like a purefeature factory.
And so people I think probablyover glamorize this and in fact
(05:50):
many roads do lead to a featurefactory-like environment.
If not for all the time,like Andrea was emphasizing
some of the times, some ofthe time there might be a
sales demand, there might bea customer success demand,
there might be something.
So we all need to learnhow we can handle ourselves
when we're in thatfeature factory situation.
Andrea Saez (06:09):
Can I be slightly controversial
since I was asked to becontroversial before this call?
I do a hundred percent agreewith everything that Aakash
has said, but one thing thatI feel is really important
to understand is that thosecompanies that Aakash has called
out very fairly have the budgetto be able to do those things.
They can release to learnor release, just to see what
(06:31):
happens because they canreabsorb that risk back in.
Most companies do nothave the budget for that.
So when they try to operatelike Google or Apple or whatever
and just go, just ship it.
Just ship it, right?
There's this what was it?
Facebook saying Movefast and break things.
Worst thing that you can dobecause you're not Facebook
let's be super real about that.
Most people don't work at afang, and if they do, then
(06:53):
they're in that situation thatAakash is describing, but they
can afford to do those things.
I can't afford to do thosethings, so I have to just
play a little bit smarter.
Hannah Clark (07:02):
Okay.
So I think that we have aview now of how these things
can develop, who can getaway with it, who can't.
If we're thinking about iton, a spectrum of good to bad,
is being a feature factoryinherently a bad thing, or can
it sometimes work dependingon the business model?
Would you say that there's arealistic, viable alternative?
Paweł Huryn (07:24):
Yeah, I do not fully agree with the framing
that we need to make someconcessions always when we
choose to talk to stakeholdersabout features or just to
implement features or reviewfeature requests from the
users because first someproblems are not brainer.
So if we get a picture from thestakeholders and for example,
we need a Stripe integration.
(07:45):
Then we need aStripe integration.
We can, of course, we cantry to pretend and reverse
engineering it into the financeproblem, but in some cases,
this discovering the problemspace, exploring the problem
space isn't that necessarily.
And in other cases, stakeholdersmight have insights like
executives or sales or customersuccess that product manager
(08:06):
talking to the users might miss.
So I also don't like discardingthose insights completely.
I have seen many productmanagers who just came to
the new organization andstart talking to users.
There was no existingknowledge in organization,
but many stakeholders spenthundreds of hours with
the customers every month.
So discarding what theyknow is for me is a waste.
(08:28):
And also, at the end of the day,businesses need to make money.
So for some companies doing,for example, if they work in the
customer supplier model, doingwhat customers ask for, even
if product managers or productteams are not happy, this is
a viable way to make money.
So in that case, we can justleave the company rather than
(08:50):
trying to change it becausethis is their business model.
Hannah Clark (08:52):
Yeah, and it's a fair point.
That's the other side of thecoin is if it works, if it's
keeping the business afloat.
So sometimes that's justhow the cookie crumbles.
We'll throw it backto Andrea right away.
We're gonna move into sectiontwo, which is the roads that
lead out of the feature factory.
So it's abandoned sort of themoral question or kind of the,
is it good or bad questionand just talk about evaluating
(09:13):
whether an organization wouldbe considered a feature factory.
So how do we know if ourorg is over investing
in short term and underinvesting in long-term value?
Where's that balance?
Andrea Saez (09:22):
I think that the first science to that just
comes down to are you receivinga ton of negative feedback?
Are you seeing high churn?
Are sales cycles taking longer?
Those are indicators thatyou're probably slipping on your
product market fit a little bit.
And that is usually the momentwhen those decisions of, oh,
let's just ship this thing.
(09:43):
Let's just build this thing,start happening in an attempt
to try and save certain accountsor try to close certain deals.
And that's when things startspinning outta control.
And then you start.
Seeing, I'm not even gonnaname certain tools, Jira.
Yeah.
You know this, youhave all these features
like do they connect?
Does it make sense?
Is it for your audience?
(10:03):
Does the UX make sensefor the love of God, Jira?
What are we doing?
Can people easily navigatethrough UI, et cetera.
But generally it's whenyou start seeing that kinda
product market fit, startto divulge a little bit,
and it's not as strong asperhaps it used to be before.
Hannah Clark (10:18):
Let's talk a little bit about
early intervention.
So if we're starting to stray alittle bit, what kinds of checks
and balances could we implementjust to frame the context of
who I'm asking this question to.
We discussed before that thereis limited influence at certain
levels of product managementwhere you can't necessarily
influence the direction ofthe company depending on
(10:40):
the maturity of the company.
There's a lot of factors,but assuming that you're in a
position where you've got somesignificant influence in the
company's trajectory, what kindsof early inventions or checks
and balances can we implementto really remain focused on
delivering value and stayingtrue to our company's vision?
Paweł, do you wannatake this one?
Paweł Huryn (10:56):
I will start by aligning about what is the
important, what is our strategyfor the entire organization?
Because if there are, if theteams are not aligned about how
we create value, what customersdo we want to solve, what
problems we want to tackle.
What is different about what weare building then it might be
extremely difficult to delivervalue by, by different teams.
So first is the strategicalignment and choices that
(11:18):
we make so that everyone isaware of the strategic context.
This is what in no rules.
Yeah.
Netflix calls withcontext not control.
And then another thing wouldbe aligning teams around
the objectives so thateveryone understands what
is the most important thing.
In the organization orwhat are the most important
objectives in the organization?
(11:40):
For example, in the quarteror nah, during the year so
that the teams can align theteam objectives or department
objectives with those keypriorities for the organization.
And then there is an empowermentthat might require coaching
because not every product teamnecessarily knows how to perform
continuous product discovery.
But broadly speaking, wewould like to by default,
(12:03):
not in every situationbecause there are exceptions.
But by default we wouldlike to empower teams with
meaningful problems to solveclear desired outcomes so
that they can either, they candiscover how to solve those
problems and create value forthe customers, and ultimately
create value for the business.
That would be it.
So starting from strategyand and in with empowering
(12:24):
teams so that they can startthis discovery process.
Hannah Clark (12:27):
Yeah, something that kind of feels
relevant to add to that.
I recently had a conversationwith Cem Kansu from Duolingo,
who's the CPO of Duolingo,and we talked a little bit
about some of the ways thatDuolingo thinks about vision and
values and that kind of thing.
And they, at their company,they have some sacred cows
that they've as a company,agreed that we don't touch
this or we, we don't makeany changes to this specific
(12:48):
area of our business 'causeit's just core to who we are.
And that becomes like acompass for how they make
some of the decisions andwhat decisions they say no to.
So I thought that wasan interesting way to
approach that as well.
Paweł Huryn (12:59):
So try those are extremely essential.
So not just things that wewould like to focus on, but
also things really stated.
Things that we don't do,customers we don't serve for.
Yeah.
Issues that, strategiesthat we don't implement so
that everyone can avoid it.
Hannah Clark (13:13):
Before I move on to section three, did we have
anything else from paneliststhat wanted to add checks and
balances or early interventionsto ensure that we're staying
away from feature factory mode?
Aakash Gupta (13:23):
I think feature factory is a pejorative, right?
You don't want to be in thefeature factory, but if we break
down what are the elements ofthe feature factory that are
gonna be most destructive.
The number one thing thatyou can do in a business is
not actually focus on theright part of the business.
So getting your executive teamto focus on the parts, the
(13:45):
metrics, the user problemsthat actually matter.
That is I think always the areathat has the highest leverage.
And so it's aboutbringing in insights.
That establish yourcredibility along the way.
And I typically think about twotypes of insights that I want
to be bringing to like almostany of these conversations
that I have with executives.
(14:05):
I wanna have some user insights,hopefully substantiated by,
session replays, user analytics,data conversations, or ideally
call recordings that I have ofconversations with customers.
Then actual data insights,like usually around a growth
model or a size of opportunity.
For example, did youknow that 16% of our
(14:27):
customers haven't done Y?
If we get just 50% of thosecustomers to do that, it
could lead to x milliondollars in revenue, right?
If you come with a sort ofthese two types of insights
to executives, you're gonnastart being able to sculpt,
focusing on the right metricsand the right problems.
That's the first point.
That's what Paweł wassaying with strategy.
(14:47):
And then the second point isyou want to allow your teams
on the ground, your designersand PMs, as they're actually
prototyping, as they'reactually putting mocks in
front of users to iterate andchange direction from what
the executives had in mind.
And so to do that, I findthat implementing checkpoints.
Product review meetings whereexecutives still feel like
(15:10):
they have a say along the way.
What you don't want isthe executives hand you
a design at planning.
Three months later, you sendthem the future results,
write up that it didn'twork, and they say, you
didn't implement my design.
That's why it didn't work.
I. In those three months,you wanna bring them along
with several product reviews.
Your design was put in frontof users, we improved your
design for X and y reasons.
(15:31):
That's what weactually launched.
And so those to me, arethe two really important
leverage points to add onsome tactics to the high level
strategy that Paweł gave.
Hannah Clark (15:41):
That's really valuable insight.
Before we move on, doesanyone wanna respond to that?
Andrea Saez (15:46):
I don't think I would say anything different.
I completely agree.
I'm not gonna becontroversial on this one.
I think both Aakashand Paweł are a hundred
percent right on that.
The only thing I wouldadd is, as you're gaining
alignment, make sure thatthere is alignment, right?
That's one of the things whereI see a lot of team fails is
they'll say yes, and then a weeklater everybody's running around
(16:08):
trying to do their own thing.
So absolutelyexecutive alignment.
It has to start from the top.
Everybody needs to be alignedaround what you're doing, why
you're doing, how you're doingit, who you're doing it for,
and the who tends to be thebiggest source of misalignment
because everybody's tryingto, there's no lying around
the ICP, so everyone's tryingto sell to someone different.
(16:28):
And when you're trying to sellto different audiences, that's
when you start sneaking infeatures that perhaps don't fit.
Hannah Clark (16:34):
In regard to question number two,
as in shortsighted featuredevelopment, is it also true
that sometimes companiesrelease features that are
disconnected from the pathto vision realization with
a full intention to circleback and refine the features?
However, once a company thatgets into the feature factory
spiral, it's then tough to getoutta that cycle and then it
just never manages to returnto suboptimal features that
were originally intended to beimproved, like a, feature debt.
(16:58):
Does anyone have anythingthey wanted to respond?
Paweł Huryn (17:01):
I assume that this is about releasing
features that are not idealor far from perfect, at least
in my experience, this isexactly what we should do.
So release features withoutimplementing every possible
detail, every corner usecase, but rather do something
that solves the problem formaybe 70, maybe 80% of the
users for the most common usecases and just get feedback.
(17:22):
Of course, sometimes it mightnot be possible, but in most
cases, in most of the productorganizations I worked in.
We started simple.
Even if there was somedesign or idea, what we would
like to achieve in four orfive months, we quickly got
feedback from the users.
And also often after gettingthis feedback, we improved our
(17:43):
initial assumptions becauseeven if you test your designs,
you run those usability testsand you interview customers,
you automate those tests.
And for example,I did it with Mac.
The actual results fromproduction when customers
start using the realdata might be different.
So I'm 100% for releasingfeatures that are not ideal.
Hannah Clark (18:06):
I wanna toss it to Andrea a little bit
because, so how does thatfit into the strategy?
'cause you mentioned, inyour organization you don't
necessarily have the budgetto release features at that
rate, and you have to be morestrategic about what you do.
So do you have a differentapproach or how do you see that?
Andrea Saez (18:21):
No, I agree with what Paweł said.
You should be releasingwith intention, right?
Not everything needs to beperfect, I think, I don't wanna
make assumptions, but Todd saidhalf-baked and I think that is
something I have seen beforewhere we release something
and say, okay, we'll getback to improving this later.
And then you just moveon to more new stuff.
But the teams don't goback to make improvements.
(18:42):
And I see Aakash noddinga lot, so maybe you
have a bit to add there.
But that is a little bitof that feature trap where
it's let's just release new.
And then we don't go backand make improvements to
what sometimes feels likevery basic stuff, like
some basic usability stuff.
Where we assume that people willjust get it because it's there,
so go figure it out type thing.
Aakash Gupta (19:03):
Yeah, I think that all our commenters are
right I think Brent, Todd, bothare pointing to this phenomena
that happens, which is why thefeature factory is so bad, is we
have this shiny object syndromerelease, half-baked features.
We never fix the featuresafterwards or update them
even though we know a bunch ofthings because we're just moving
(19:24):
on to the next shiny object.
That's one of the thingsyou wanna avoid, right?
And so when people are thenasking, I think Agua asks like,
how do you move out of this?
So when people havethat syndrome it's about
bring those user insightthat, hey, user insight.
We looked at a hundredsession replays last week.
Three people clicked onthis feature data insight,
(19:49):
like of people who youclick on this feature, the
30 day retention is 7%.
It's like nobody's adoptingthis feature and nobody's
retaining with this feature.
You try to bring those insightsto the executives and the
feature factory leaders, thehippos driving the feature
factory, and because you'respeaking their language now
(20:09):
and you've brought theseinsights, hopefully they will
allow you to either iterateso it's not half baked.
Oftentimes if we're talkingabout a 7% adoption, like
actually get people to seethe thing and try it out.
But there also seem tobe a retention problem,
so fix whatever retentionissues there are.
So that's one optionor the second.
And often what peoplereally need to do is just
kill features, right?
(20:29):
There's way too many featuresout there that are actually
getting in the way of the corejob to be done of your user.
And this is particularlypernicious in B2B where
we all try to becomeplatform companies.
We all try to extendbeyond one product.
As soon as we hit 10million ARR, we think we
need a second product.
But in fact, like just focusingon that core often is so much
more high impact for you.
Andrea Saez (20:51):
I think it was Pendo that did a study that said
80% of features don't get used.
There's a huge number.
Hannah Clark (20:58):
That's wild.
I think a fitting segueinto our final section
here, which is, so we arein factory mode, now what?
I imagine that a lot of folksdecided to tune in today
because they're either alreadyworking in what they would
consider to be a featurefactory, or they're concerned
that you're increasinglygoing off of the deep end.
So let's assume thatchanging that model, at
(21:20):
least in the short term, isimpossible or it's a very
goal just because of the waythat things are currently
working in the entrenchedinfrastructure of the company.
Are there any kind of steps thatwe can take from a leadership
perspective to get back awayfrom the future factory mindset
and become more value focused.
Aakash Gupta (21:38):
If you're the leader, then it's actually
incumbent upon you, right?
So if you're the VP of product,you're the chief product
officer, you're whatevertitle that it is, if you're
that top person, right?
Fundamentally, if you'redoing your job well,
you're always calling outall of the deficiencies
in your organization,all of the problems that
you guys need to fix.
That's actually the job.
(21:59):
It's not to like tootlike, we are so amazing.
We launch all theseamazing things.
It's like you're there to solveproblems for the company, so you
should be trying to call out.
These are the big problems,and the feature factory is
actually one of those ones thatpeople are pretty responsive.
You know what you do isyou say, okay, hey guys.
What was yourstrategy last year?
What were all of the featuresthat we committed to building
(22:21):
and how did those perform?
How many of them succeeded?
And you take a look atthat and you say, okay,
75% of them didn't succeed.
Is that what we wantto do this year?
If not right, how are wegonna break chip away at that?
How are we gonnabreak that down?
And so again, you'respeaking their language.
You're not saying,Hey, Marty Kagan says I
need to empower my PMs.
(22:42):
And that's what's broken aboutour product management process.
Marty is right about that.
But you're speaking thelanguage of the stakeholders.
So you're taking what youlearned from Marty and you're
bringing it to the stakeholders.
And so that to me is the jobof a great VP of product.
And I think Andrew said itin her very first response.
It's like what's led to thisfeature factory is the lack
of a great VP of product or agreat chief product officer.
(23:06):
I would also say though,sometimes founders especially,
but some CEOs, they're just hardto work with and you can have
the best VP of product ever andthe founder CEO is just gonna
force things down anyways.
And if you're in that scenario,you need to think about
playing chess with your careerand going somewhere else.
Andrea Saez (23:24):
I was actually gonna say exactly that.
You can be the best CPO, thebest VP of product, you can
do or try to do all the rightthings, if you don't have
the support of your CEO andthe rest of the C level, you
are not gonna get anywhere.
It's just, it'snot gonna happen.
There has to be alignment,like I said, at that C
level because once there'sreal alignment there, then
(23:45):
everything's a lot easier.
And I have worked with CPOswhere they had absolutely
no influence and it wasreally sales that was driving
development, not the CPO.
The other thing I would add tothat is having alignment and
understanding around measurableuser behaviors, and that's
obviously part of my book.
But a lot of features thatare built don't focus on
(24:09):
repeatable, scalable behaviors.
So things that people aregonna come in and do every
single day because they'reindispensable to the user.
Sometimes features are justput out to ship, right?
But are they really thinkingabout the value to the customer?
Is it actually gonna helpthem solve a problem?
Or are we putting outa feature that's making
their lives harder?
(24:30):
And maybe there's like awhole ethics chat there as
well of, how does it impactthe life and the behavior and
the workflows of the user.
Paweł Huryn (24:37):
I agree with everything what
has been said so far.
I cannot add also from theperspective of a product
manager, product team thatdon't have this influence
in the organization.
It's also often possible to movethings in the right direction.
Obviously you won't to changethe entire organization,
how the organization works.
But for example, in the past Iwas able, I work at bc, which
(24:59):
is a resource center for morethan 30 banks from Denmark.
My initiative was the onlyinitiative that escaped safe, so
scale agile framework, which is,for me, it's like a waterfall
with this long term planning.
So how we did thatwas we analyzed the
previous initiatives.
We tried to highlightthe problems.
(25:22):
So like in the case of CPO,just from the product manager
perspective, show the problemsand measure the problems with
the current approach and thatif we are going to continue,
one of the most complexinitiatives will probably fail
like all the previous ones.
And we suggested an experimentsso that our initiative, so that
was one core team and four otherthat collaborated with us, just
(25:45):
started working in an agile waywithout this heavy framework.
So the same argumentsand it worked.
Obviously we didn't changethe entire organization,
but for my initiativeit worked pretty well.
Hannah Clark (25:58):
Yeah, I really appreciate you chiming in
with the perspective of folkswho have a little bit less
influence, 'cause I'm sure thatthere are folks who are finding
themselves in that positionwhere they're not necessarily
a VP of product, but, youstill wanna try and make your
work as impactful as possible.
Paweł Huryn (26:10):
Can also influence a lot of things
that are inside your team.
So just don't askabout permission and
start collaboratingwith your designers.
Inviting your engineers tobrainstorm about solutions
and rather than preparingeverything kind upfront,
talking to the customers alone.
Andrea Saez (26:26):
One thing that I'd like to add, if possible, that
Paweł I think has brought up ishow much hard work that entails.
And I was amazed whenyou said that, what
you were just talking.
I was like, how did he do that?
Because it is a lot of hardwork and I, most of the time
in my career have a life warwith Aakash, where it's I'm
not gonna bother with this timeto find a new job type thing.
(26:50):
But it is really difficult todo a transformation like that.
So power to anyone that cando that or is going through
that because it is draining toyour wellbeing, to your mental
health, to your everyday.
But I think you once, or ifyou're able to get out of that
on the other side, there'sa lot of learning as well.
Hannah Clark (27:10):
Yeah, that's definitely an incredible
trajectory to be able tobring into whatever experience
you have next, whether youstay at the company or not.
If you wanna follow ourspeakers also today, each
one of these folks areamazing thought leaders.
We've got a lot of greatcontent from each of them.
Andrea's book, theProduct Momentum Gap
is available on Amazon.
You can look it up there.
Aakash's newsletter, theProduct Growth Newsletter.
(27:32):
So make sure yousubscribe to that.
It's a fantastic resource.
And Paweł's newsletter iscalled Product Compass.
Aakash and Paweł havecollaborated on some podcasts,
but I know Aakash is reallyactive on his podcast as well.
Please make sure you subscribeto our panelists stuff 'cause
they're putting out great stuffall the time, not just today.
And I guess we can moveright along into our Q&A.
(27:53):
We've got some great questionsfrom our audience today.
The first one hereis from Aqueda.
I hope I pronouncedthat correctly.
So how do we get fromfeature factory to continuous
user and customer valuecreation that creates
positive business impact?
I feel we've touched onthis a little bit, but maybe
there's some stuff to add.
She says seems like thecustomer value piece of the
equation has been obfuscatedby a quick profit result.
(28:14):
Andrea, if you wanna givemaybe Cliffs notes of what
you cover in the book,that might be helpful.
Andrea Saez (28:18):
Literally that.
So it is about bringingtogether product strategy
and customer value.
So we talk a lot about customervalue, how to identify it,
how to track it, how to focuson it, how to bring your
team together, and I thinkthat's a really key part.
So we have a little templatecalled the product VCP or the
product Value creation plan.
(28:39):
The key part that's reallyimportant, something that
Paweł touched on earlier isthat it's really not about
the product team makingthose decisions in isolation.
It's about listening to sales.
It's about listeningto customer success.
It's about listening tosupport and bringing all those
key stakeholders into thisworkshop and collaborating
with them and understandingthen what value means in
(29:00):
order to then deliver it.
Hannah Clark (29:02):
Actually, if you want a taste of that,
we discussed exactly that onthe podcast about a year ago.
So the podcast episodeon the Product Manager
podcast was how productleaders are unintentionally
hindering business growth.
Okay, so nextquestion from Parker.
So what tools slash methodsdo you use to foster strategic
discussions and alignmentaround a common product goal?
What has been mosteffective for you?
(29:23):
This is interesting, so alittle bit more tactical here.
Does anyone wannajump in on this one?
Aakash Gupta (29:27):
If we're trying to create alignment on a particular
goal, the first thing to dois not to just suggest this
is what the right answer is.
Here you go.
Let's go for it.
Ideally, you want to setup this context with the
people who're not haven'tbrought along and say, Hey,
I think we may not have theright goal at this point.
(29:48):
Can we go through a processtogether where we try to
figure out the right goal?
Then you wanna set upthis process in a very
collaborative way.
What I like to do is actuallylike work with an analyst
or somebody who's super wellrespected by both parties,
some external third party andsay, Hey, can we get some sort
of like research report orsomething going and you present
(30:11):
that to us and then we can talkback and ask questions to you
so that you're learning with thepeople who you disagree with.
You're learning about themetrics and the options,
then you have some sort of abrainstorm, a setup, brainstorm.
Often do it overlike Miro, remotely.
It doesn't need to be in person.
Like these are the optionalmetrics and goals that
we could be focused on.
What are the pros andcons of these options?
(30:33):
Let's talk about these together,and then as the PM using the
power of the pen to record now.
Okay.
These are the options.
These are the pros and cons.
Again, going back to yourthird party person now and
working with them, who's sayingokay, the data science team
has gone and looked at this.
We have gone and looked at this.
We've involved some of the PMs,designers and engineers who have
been building on this for thelast six months as well, to get
(30:55):
their feedback on what metricsare easy to move versus not.
And then you have a finaldiscussion where it's like.
Again, you're not comingin with the right answer.
You're willing to even hearout what the other person
says, but you guys make adecision in that meeting.
So that's how I like tostructure it very tactically
for folks, is a sequence ofthings, and it takes longer
this way, but hopefullyyou have more buy-in.
Hannah Clark (31:17):
I always leave it to you to give
like a very clear, specificprocess, so I appreciate that.
We'll move on to Mikayla.
We have a revamp request fora product by the business
and from the UX team.
We wanna properly understandthe pain points, gain insights,
and understand the journeys.
So far, it's been a featurefactory and it's disconnected
because we use many systems tostitch together the UI, but the
PM is pushing to do somethingquick because we already know
(31:38):
things, quote unquote, butthere's not clear direction.
What do you think is agood way to get out of it?
Okay, so this is a veryspecific situation, so let's
just note the facts here.
So we have all these insights,but they seem to be disconnected
from the features thatyou're actually developing.
And the PM is just looking tojust do speed over quality.
It sounds like, Mikayla,you'll have to correct me
(31:58):
if I'm getting any of thedetails of this incorrect.
So it sounds like we've gota number of different issues.
Insights are disconnected fromwhat's actually being built
and PM is, doesn't seem tobe making that connection.
Paweł Huryn (32:10):
In this case, in this situation, it's product
manager who is pushing featureswithout proper validation.
So that might be difficult,but overall, if someone is
pushing features, I wouldtry to reverse engineer and
ask about the problem thisfeature is solving, and then
explore, validate the problemand maybe the rather solutions.
I would also like to understandif this problem is aligned
(32:32):
with the broader objectivesthat are currently important
for the organization andstrategy and company vision.
Perhaps someone from the teamother than product manager
can try to reverse engineeror at least maybe, if not
everything, then find someinconsistencies between data,
between what analytics, whatdata analytics funnels cohort
(32:52):
analysis presents and thefeatures that we are building.
There must be some set ofassumptions behind those
features that I would like tovalidate those assumptions.
Andrea Saez (33:01):
I agree with Paweł.
There's two magic questions.
What problem are wetrying to solve and why?
And also who we'resolving it for.
'cause don't forget about thewho, but yeah I've been in a
situation like that recentlyand the product team just
wanted to ship because theyknew what they were doing
and I just went in and said,Hey, I don't wanna disrupt.
But I'm just wondering if youcan explain the problem to
me and the decision makingprocess so that I understand it.
(33:25):
Because as a product marketer,I need to sell this and I need
to understand the value, and Ineed to understand the decision
making process and just gettingthem to work through that logic.
It's this little productproblem outline where you
can just ask what problemare you trying to solve?
Why for whom?
What's the business impact?
What's the customervalue we're delivering?
And talk through that logic andthat can help steer the boat
(33:46):
with a little bit of influenceand really get the team to think
about like why are they doingthings at the end of the day?
Hannah Clark (33:52):
Yeah, taking them to task or, I think
that's a great suggestion.
We have some more questionscoming in, so in the name
of time we'll move in, but Ithink that was a great chat.
Thank you for asking Mikayla.
Okay.
Brent has our nextquestion here.
In an ideal situation, shoulda company or product become
less of a feature factory asit matures potentially, can
this trend be a signal ofmisapplication of product teams?
Andrea Saez (34:14):
Who's got thoughts?
Hannah, I wanna hear yours.
Hannah Clark (34:17):
I'm an outsider here really, but it
seems to me that a companyshould become, they should
be the least of featurefactory at the beginning.
When you really have aspecific goal that you're
trying to achieve and aspecific user problem that
you're trying to solve.
Kind of seems to me that youbecome a, like the feature
factory creeps in as youmake concessions in order
to keep your business alive.
(34:38):
And so it seems to meit is something that a
scaling business is gonnarun into a lot more.
But full disclosure, like I havenot been in the position to have
to deal with these concerns.
I don't know.
Fact, check me.
Aakash Gupta (34:52):
I think they're probably like roughly equivalent
percentages at all life stages.
Sometimes when you're reallyearly on, you feel like, okay,
all we need to do is justlike copy this other product.
Just like fully copy it.
Know?
Like, so everything is clear.
Like it's just a future factor.
Like you guys, you'rejust gonna go build
gong's, call recorder now.
Just go build that now.
Don't you have the exactroadmap right there?
(35:14):
Can't you just see it?
So I think that futurefactory, they can, it
can hit in anywhere.
Really though, what you want tothink about, regardless of what
environment you are in, is whatare the parts of the feature
factory that are hurting me.
And from that, it's reallyam I not able to deliver
an ROI on my salary?
If I'm being paid $150,000,like an average pm, am
(35:38):
I generating $150,000 aprofit for the company?
Because if I'm not, thenthe future factor is really
becoming a problem for me,and I need to start to fix
those areas one by one.
And so in terms of the sociologyof what percentage there
are, I personally think thatthey're probably everywhere.
You'll see really good companiesthat are huge, like Enterprise,
(35:59):
like I think Meta is an examplethat a lot of people hold
up where Hey, PMs, they'reactually empowered to do stuff.
But then there's alsoseries C companies.
There's series A companies.
I think even what I washearing is the recent OpenAI
launch of image generation.
Like it wasn't like a Samsaid we need to ship a much
better image generation today.
It was like.
The researchers andengineers working at OpenAI
(36:21):
uncovered these new thingsand they brought them up.
So there's even open eyestage $300 billion companies
that are doing great.
So at every stage you'llfind a similar proportion,
which is like more than50% feature factory.
Hannah Clark (36:33):
So I'll move on to Sahi.
What are some of the valueadded benefits that a product
manager coming from a businessand technical hybrid background
brings to the table versus apurely technical background
product manager when itcomes to features and design?
Andrea Saez (36:46):
I do think that there is a link in that.
I could be a hundred percentwrong in this, but in my
very biased experience,purely technical PMs tend
to lack business focus, andat the end of the day, we're
all building stuff to self.
I'm not suggesting everyoneshould be a hundred percent
ROI focused, but just havingthat sense of we are building
(37:09):
something that needs to besold and how do our decisions
impact the business andour ROI and all of that.
PMs with a business backgroundwill understand that from the
beginning and their decisionswill be targeted that way,
whereas sometimes technical camsare just like focused on the
technical side of things, butnot necessarily worried about.
(37:30):
That return on investmentor what that looks like.
A really great example of thisis I've been in situations where
we're talking about buildinga particular feature or I'm
jumping in at a point where thishas already been done and I'm
jumping in at the end and myfirst question will be, have we
thought about how we sell this?
And everyone's whoa, nope.
I'm like that should havebeen the first question.
(37:51):
How are we selling it?
Who are we selling it to?
If you're a B2B and youhave everything from like an
individual to an enterprisepackage, is the feature
that you're building setup to take the customer
through that journey?
Because an enterprise customeris not gonna have the same
problem as an individual ina pre-seed startup wanting to
use your product, and not alot of people might go through.
(38:15):
That thought process.
If they don't have thatbusiness background,
that could be biased.
I could be wrong.
So feel free tocorrect me on that.
Hannah Clark (38:22):
Does anyone feel the need the right?
Aakash Gupta (38:24):
Yeah I think he's just trying to ask, like
he probably has a technicalbusiness background and he is
comparing himself to peoplewith a purely technical
background and wondering likewhat advantage can he bring?
He spent a lot of timetalking about impact, right?
In today's conversation,the impact of your work.
And so I think if you havea business background, try
to think about leading onthose types of PM skills.
(38:46):
Build the growth model foryour team, impact size all your
features, write really greatfeature results, write-ups.
So always try to play toyour strengths and don't
worry so much about whatother people are doing.
It's up to those technical PMsto learn the business skills.
To be honest, they're not thathard, so most technical PMs can
learn them pretty easily and.
(39:07):
Just focus on yourself, likehow do I leverage my strengths?
If I'm really strong in Excel,do more Excel stuff as a pm.
That's the magic of the PM roleis you can make it your own.
Andrea Saez (39:16):
A hundred percent agree with that.
Hannah Clark (39:18):
Todd has said, Paweł, you mentioned
earlier that you'd liketo keep all insights.
At what point do you turninsights into backlog items?
Our backlog feels likethe feature factory floor.
We recommend archivingbacklog items that are
older than 12 months.
Paweł, would you mindjust responding to that
question so that otherscan take away from it?
Paweł Huryn (39:33):
So first I'm not sure I really mentioned
keeping all the insights.
So what I might have mentionedis leveraging insights
from different sources.
So not just customer interviews,but also stakeholders,
market research, dataanalytics, surveys, and so on.
So this is the first thing,and when it comes to organizing
(39:55):
insights and product backlogitems, I have always avoided
placing user stories or featuresin the product backlog for
the developers prematurely.
So I would rather completethe discovery, share the
designs, test the keyassumptions, and share our
findings with the organization.
And only after we getenough confidence than split
(40:18):
it into user stories andfind with the team or user
stories or other formativesomeone uses something else.
So it's like havingtwo backlogs though.
It doesn't have tobe the same tool.
It can be just Miro orsome other visual tool to
collect those insights andconnect them to user needs.
When it comes to a hiding,there was another question
(40:40):
I would typically just getread are hi and height.
So all the items that aresitting in the backlog for
too long because it's, ifthe product backlog has
more than let's say 8,100elements it's not manageable.
So this, in my experiencewill never be tackled, and
if they are important, theywill be bring up again.
Hannah Clark (40:59):
Thank you for everyone for joining.
And of course, a huge thankyou to our panelists for
volunteering their time today.
So panelists, thank you somuch, Aakash, Andrea, Paweł.
It was really fun.
Very informative session.
I just want to thankeverybody for participating
in our event today and beingsuch an engaged audience.
We hope to see you next time.
Thanks for listening in.
(41:20):
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