Do All Roads Lead to the Feature Factory?

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[00:00:00] Hannah Clark: Hey everyone. Okay, we're gonna get going here 'cause we got lots to cover. Uh, so welcome everyone to the latest in our community event series. So if you are the, uh, joining us for the first time today, we hold these, uh, panel events every month and they just get better and better and better. Uh, and this one is, I mean, I don't wanna put too much pressure on our panelists, but I think it might be our best yet.

Um, so thank you so much for making time in your day to join us. My name, if you don't know me yet, is Hannah Clark. I'm the executive editor for the product manager and I'll be your host today. Um, so we'll get started in a moment. Uh, but before we do, if you wanna just chime in with where you're tuning in from, say hi to everybody here.

Um, we also have posted a poll, uh, in the chat window. Uh, so, uh, or in the chat window, in, in, in the platform of Zoom. Uh, here we go. Yeah, it's popped up here. Um, so if you wanna answer the poll here, we just wanna get a [00:01:00] sense of where you're coming from. You know, what, what are you hoping to get out of this conversation?

Are you currently in a factor, a feature factory? Um, do you know what a feature factory is? Do you feel like you're kind of halfway in there? Let us know

we'll get right into it. Today's c session, we're gonna be answering the question, do all roads lead to the feature factory?

So we're gonna be speaking to, uh, some top voices in and thought leaders in the space. Uh, so, uh, please welcome our panelists. So we've got Pawel Huryn. He writes the Product Compass Newsletter and he's followed by over a hundred thousand PMs across, uh, and around the world. He's got over 15 years of experience, including five years of running a successful startup.

And he explores critical PM topics that focus on things that you need to know and provide some step-by-step instructions and action, actual advice. And he is here with us today. So Pablo, uh, thank you for joining us.

[00:01:46] Pawel Huryn: Yeah, thanks for having me.

[00:01:48] Hannah Clark: And, uh, I have a little jeopardy question for you here to get to know you on a more personal level.

So, beyond all the professional, uh, success, you've also shared that you are currently learning to play the guitar. That what are you currently Yeah. That's awesome. Are, are you learning to [00:02:00] play any songs or have you reached that point yet?

[00:02:02] Pawel Huryn: Uh, yeah, I started by playing songs. Uh, so I both an acoustic guitar and, uh, in addition to my new full-time, uh, the product composting letter adventure, uh, I spent time playing guitar.

[00:02:17] Hannah Clark: Nice. Yeah, so always good to keep that creative brain fired up. Uh, so thank you for joining us and we've also got an, Andrea says she's the co-author of the Product Momentum Gap, uh, which is a book that challenges the conventional wisdom of product development and introduces a new paradigm for creating value and growth.

Very cool book. Um, so Andrea, thank you for joining us.

[00:02:36] Andrea Saez: Thank you. Thank you for the invite.

[00:02:39] Hannah Clark: And, uh, you just got back from Harry Potter World. Did you dress up as somebody?

[00:02:44] Andrea Saez: I was the only one in the group of tea. I went with my teenage ne uh, nieces and nephews, and I was the only one proudly wearing my Raven Claw, um, shirt.

So I just need everybody to know that I'm a Raven Claw and I'm very proud. [00:03:00] It was a lot of fun. It was honestly a lot of fun.

[00:03:04] Hannah Clark: Maybe we'll have to do a panel on, uh, sorting hat. Uh, so thanks for coming and, and joining us today. I know that you're joining us from, uh, you're, are you born Barcelona? Me? No, I'm in the uk.

Or in the uk. I knew you were in Europe somewhere. Sorry. Um, well thank you for joining us. Uh, we're on a bit of a, uh, all kinds of time zones right now. Uh, and Pablo too. You're joining us from Poland, right? Yeah. Okay. I'm from

[00:03:30] Pawel Huryn: Poland. I'm sitting in Warsaw. Okay.

[00:03:32] Hannah Clark: Awesome. Yeah, very international panel today.

Um, so we're also joined by Akash Gupta. He's the author of two newsletters, uh, and a now two podcasts a week as well, uh, on how to Succeed as a pm product leader and, or, or aspiring pm which you might, we already be following him. He's got, it's the Product growth Newsletter. Um, so Akash, thank you for joining us today.

[00:03:53] Aakash Gupta: Glad to be here. Love Pawel, Hannah, Andrea, all of your content. So this should be fun. [00:04:00]

[00:04:00] Hannah Clark: Yeah, I'm looking forward to it as well. So, you are currently making the move to la Uh, what are you most excited to see or explore there? To

[00:04:09] Aakash Gupta: be honest, the beach, I've missed surfing, so it'll be great to be on the water again.

[00:04:15] Hannah Clark: I'm in a landlocked place, so I, uh, I can, yeah. Enjoy it for us. Uh, uh, so we're gonna get started with our discussion now. Um, and it looks, just looking at some preliminary, uh, poll numbers, it looks like we've got a pretty, uh, even split between people who've, uh, consider their organizations to be feature factories and ones that are not quite clear on that.

Um, so we'll get into that. Uh, actually with, uh, defining the term, I think that'll be helpful for everybody just to kind of get on the same page of what we mean when we say a feature factory. Um, so the definition we're using is, uh, it's, I, I believe pull from John Cutler originally coined the term. Um, so a feature factory is a company that consistently releases products, features, enhancements, et cetera, and predominantly [00:05:00] focuses on quantity over quality.

So they focus on output rather than outcomes. And, um, we're kind of. Hinting at there, uh, is that we're, we're in a situation where we see that we're shipping a ton of features, but it isn't always clear whether the features have a real strong business value or whether they really strongly resonate with our users.

Um, so, uh, obviously there's, it can get, uh, tied up in some issues. So, we'll, uh, we'll be covering this, uh, in three sections. Section one, uh, will be why are feature factories so prevalent? We'll then move on to section two, which is the roads that Lead outta the Feature Factory. And section three, which is, we're in factory mode.

Now what, so, uh, just to give you an overview of what we're gonna be covering today, and we're gonna get started with section one. So, um, the first question here, I'm gonna pass it off to Andrea first. How do well-meaning organizations become feature factories? Like, how does this develop?

[00:05:52] Andrea Saez: Uh, to be honest, there isn't a single path.

Um, people ask me a lot, how do I prevent it? How do I prevent it? There's a [00:06:00] multiple of, of, um, paths that can take you down that way. Um, everything from, you know, just trying to close sales. Um, you maybe don't have a, a good product leader or head of product or a VP of product, whatever it is. Um, could be a hippo thing, could be a shiny object syndrome.

There's a lot of different ways, uh, to get there, but I think the, the underlying, let's say, foundational problem would be, um, a lack of influence from a product leader to be able to really set a strategy and say, this is what we're doing, this is why we're doing it. Um, and also just be able to. Run negotiations as to when you do have to ship a feature for certain reasons, but be able to then bring the team back towards the strategy.

Um, I think the, the reality is, as much as I would love to stand here and say we're never gonna do that, you know, we can, I can absolutely avoid a feature factory. Uh, there are moments in everybody's [00:07:00] career, in every company journey where you might have to make those concessions and go, fine, we'll have to build that feature because we do have to get that, you know, revenue in, we need the money, right?

Um, so it's, it's not, I think something that is just a black and white situation. Um, there, there are negotiations and concessions that have to be made, but the important thing is to have a product leader in place that will be able to say, okay, we did that, that, now let's bring us back to, to our strategy to what we're really trying to, to do and to solve.

[00:07:32] Hannah Clark: Yeah. Uh, um, Akash, did you have anything that you wanted to add? I know that you've kind of got like a. You shared a perspective with, uh, with me before that sort of inspired this conversation, which is, you know, it seems like all roads do, uh, lead to the feature factory. What's been your experience in the field?

[00:07:47] Aakash Gupta: Yeah, I think that we tend to say, okay, there are these awesome companies out there. They're in Silicon Valley, Google, Netflix, meta, and they [00:08:00] just do product the right way. And if you just do product like them, all your problems will be solved. You'll hit your metrics, your business will succeed and you'll grow in your career.

And then people follow this advice and they quickly realized that, hmm, there seemed to be some gaps here. And the number one gap that I've seen is that when I go and talk to PMs who work at these companies and I say, oh, okay, what's the biggest feature you shipped last quarter? I. They'll say, oh yeah, it was X and y.

And I'll say, oh, what was the etymology of that feature? Like how did that feature get developed? Who came up with that feature? Invariably at these big tech companies, all the impactful features were decided by the executive team. They were heavily debated for six months before there was no classical PM discovery where the PM was talking to users in a continuous discovery process every two weeks, and they came up with this [00:09:00] brilliant solution that no executive at Google or Meta had ever thought about, and they changed the trajectory of the company.

That just never happens, and so I think that there, there is. This sort of over glamorization of what actually happens at these companies and in fact app places. I would specifically call it like Apple for instance, or even Snapchat. Snapchat, CEO. Evan Spiegel was recently on a bunch of podcasts. They are, there's a couple designers and the CEO who are dictating like everything.

It's like a pure feature factory. And so people, I think probably over glamorize this. And in fact, many roads do lead to a feature factory like environment, if not for all the time. Like Andrea was emphasizing some of the times, some of the time there might be a sales demand, there might be a customer success demand, there might be something.

And so we all need to learn how we can handle ourselves when we're in that feature factory situation. Hmm.

[00:09:55] Andrea Saez: Can I be slightly controversial since I was asked to be controversial before [00:10:00] this call? I do a hundred percent agree with everything that Akash has said, but one thing that I feel is really, really important to understand is that those companies that Akash has called out, um, very fairly have the budget to be able to do those things, right?

They can release to learn or release just to see what happens because they can reabsorb that risk back in. Most companies do not have the budget for that. So when they try to operate like Google or Apple or whatever and just go, just ship it. Just ship it, right? There's this like, um, what was it? Facebook saying, move fast and break things.

Worst thing that you can do because you're not Facebook. Like, let's be super real about that. Most people don't work at a fang. Um, and if they do, then they're in that situation that Ash is, is describing, but they can afford to do those things. I can't afford to do those things, so I have to just play a little bit smarter.

[00:10:53] Hannah Clark: Hmm. Okay. So I think, I think that we have [00:11:00] sort of a, a view now of, you know, how these things can, can, can develop, um, who can kind of get away with it, who can't. So we're on, if we're thinking about it on, you know, um, a spectrum of good to bad, is it are, is being a feature factory inherently a bad thing or can it sometimes work depending on the business model?

Pawel, uh, is there, would you say that there's a realistic, viable alternative? I. Uh, that, you know. Yeah. So first,

[00:11:29] Pawel Huryn: I, I, yeah, I do not fully agree with the framing that we need to make some concessions always when we choose to talk to stakeholders about features or choose to implement features or review feature requests from the users.

Um, because, uh, first some problems are not brainers. So if we get a feature from the stakeholders and, uh, for example, we need a Stripe integration, then we need a stripe integration. And we can, of course, we can try to pretend and reverse engineering it and to define as a problem. But in some cases, [00:12:00] this discovery, discovering the problem space, exploring the problem spaces that necessarily, and in other cases, uh, stakeholders might have insights that, uh.

Like executives or sales or customer success, that product manager talking to the users met me. So, uh, I also don't like discarding, uh, those insights completely. And, um, I have seen many product managers who just came to the new organization and start talking to users. Like there was no existing knowledge in the organization.

But, uh, many stakeholders spent hundreds of hours with the customers every, every month. So, um, discarding what they know is, is for me is a waste. Uh, 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, um, supplier, customer supplier model, uh, doing what customers asks for, even if uh, product [00:13:00] managers or product teams are not happy, this is a viable way to make money.

So in that case, we can just, uh, leave the company, uh, rather than trying to change it 'cause this is their business model.

[00:13:12] Hannah Clark: That's a fair point. That's kind of, um, the other side of the, the coin is if it works, if it's keeping the business afloat, sometimes that's just how the cookie crumbles. Um, okay. So first, we'll, we'll, uh, throw it back to Andrea right away.

Uh, we're, we're gonna move into section two, which is the roads that lead outta the feature factory. So, um, it's kind of abandoned sort of the, the moral question or kind of the, you know, is it good or bad question and just talk about evaluating whether an organization would be considered a feature factory.

So how do we know if our org or if our org is over investing in short term and under investing in long-term value? Where's that balance?

[00:13:52] Andrea Saez: I think the, the first science to that, um, just comes down to like. Are you receiving a ton of negative feedback? Are you seeing high [00:14:00] churn? Uh, are sales cycles taking longer?

Uh, those are indicators, um, that you're probably slipping on your product market fit a little bit. And that is usually the moment when those decisions of, oh, let's just ship this thing. Let's just just build this thing, um, start happening in an attempt to, to try and save certain accounts or try to close certain deals.

And that's when things start spinning outta control. And then you start, you know, seeing, I'm not even gonna name certain tools, JIRA. Um, and you know, these, you have all these features like do they connect? Do, does it make sense? Is it for your audience? Um, does the UX make sense for the love of God? Jira?

What are we doing? Um, you know, can people easily navigate through, through ui, et cetera. Um, but, but generally it's when you start seeing that kinda, um, product market fit start to divulge a little bit. And it's not as strong as perhaps it used to be before.

[00:14:57] Hannah Clark: Any other panelists wanna add to that?[00:15:00]

Uh, we can just move on to our next question. So, uh, let's talk a little bit about early intervention. So if we're kind of starting to, uh, stray a little bit, um, what kinds of checks and balances could we implement? Uh, and, uh, I'm just to kind of frame the context of, uh, who I'm asking this question to. Uh, we kind of discussed before that there is sort of limited influence at, uh, certain levels of product management where you can't necessarily influence the, the, the, the direction of the company depending on the, the maturity of the company.

There's a lot of factors. Um, but assuming that you're in a position where you've got some significant influence in the company's uh, trajectory, what kinds of early inventions or checks and balances can we implement to really remain focused on delivering value and staying true to our company's vision?

Uh, Pawel, do you wanna take this one?

[00:15:51] Pawel Huryn: Uh, yeah, I can. So I would start by aligning about what is the important, what is our strategy for, for the entire organization? [00:16:00] Because if there are, if the teams are not aligned about how we create value, what customers do we want to solve for problems, we want to, to tackle, uh, what is different about what we are bid, then it, it might be extremely difficult to, uh, to deliver value by, by different teams.

Uh, so first is the strategic alignment and choices that we make so that, um, everyone is aware of the strategic context. This is what, uh, in no rules, um, yeah, Netflix calls, uh, with if context not control. And then another thing would be aligning teams around the objectives so that everyone understands.

What is the most important thing, uh, in the organization? Or what are the most important objectives in the organization? For example, in the quarter or, uh, during the year, uh, so that the teams can align the team objectives or department objectives with, with those key priorities for the organization. Uh, and then there is, um, an empowerment [00:17:00] that might require coaching because not every product team necessarily knows how to perform continuous product discovery.

Uh, but broadly speaking, we would like to, uh, by default, not in every situation because there are exceptions, but by default we would like to empower teams with meaningful problems to solve clear desired outcomes so that they can either, um, that they can discover how to solve those problems and create value for the customers, and ultimately create value for the business.

And, uh, yeah, that would be, that would be, so starting from strategy and, uh, and in with, um, empowering teams so that they can start this discovery process.

[00:17:42] Hannah Clark: Yeah. Something that kind of feels relevant to add to that. Um, I, I recently had a conversation with Shem ksu from, uh, Duolingo, who's the CPO Duolingo, and we talked a little bit about, uh, some of the ways that Duolingo kind of thinks about, um, like vision and, and values and that kind of thing.

And they, uh, at their company, they sort of have some sacred [00:18:00] cows that they've sort of, you know, as a company, agreed that we don't touch this or we, we, we don't make any changes to this specific area of our business because it's just core to who we are. And that becomes sort of like a compass for how they make some, some of the decisions and, uh, what decisions they say no to.

So I thought that was an interesting way to approach that as well. Yeah. The, the trade offs, right. Sacred

[00:18:20] Pawel Huryn: cows. Yeah. So trade. Those are extremely essential. So not, not just things that we would like to focus on, but also things, uh, clearly stated things that we, we don't do, customers we don't serve, or yeah.

Issues that, strategies that we don't implement so that everyone can avoid it.

[00:18:36] Hannah Clark: Hmm. Um, before we move on to section three, did we have anything else, uh, from panelists that wanted to add, uh, checks and balances or kind of early, uh, interventions to ensure that we're staying away from feature factory mode?

[00:18:50] Aakash Gupta: Well, I think feature factory is a pejorative, right? You don't want to be in the feature factory, but if we break down what are the elements of the feature factory that are gonna be most [00:19:00] destructive, so the number one. Thing that you can do in a business, right, is not actually focus on the right part of the business.

So getting your executive team to focus on, you know, the parts, the metrics, the user problems that actually matter, that is I think always the area that has the highest leverage. And so it's about bringing in insights that establish your credibility along the way. And I typically think about two types of insights that I want to be bringing to like almost any of these conversations that I have with executives.

I wanna have some user insights. Hopefully substantiated by, you know, session replays, user analytics, data conversations, or ideally call recordings that I have with of conversations with customers. And then actual data insights, like usually around a growth model or a size of opportunity. Like for example, did you know that 16% of our customers haven't done y?

If we [00:20:00] get just 50% of those customers to do that, it could lead to x million dollars in revenue, right? If you come with a sort of these two types of insights to executives, you're gonna start being able to sculpt, focusing on the right metrics and the right problems. That's the first point. That's what Powell was saying with strategy.

And then the second point is you want to allow your teams on the ground, your designers and PMs. As they're actually prototyping, as they're actually putting mocks in front of users to iterate and change direction from what the executives had in mind. And so to do that, I find that implementing checkpoints like product review meetings where executives still feel like they have a say along the way, what you don't want is the executives hand you a design at planning.

Three months later you send them the future results, write up that it didn't work, and they say, you didn't implement my design. That's why it didn't work. In those three months, you wanna bring them along with several product reviews. Your design was put [00:21:00] in front of users, we improved your design for X and y reasons.

That's what we actually launched. And so those to me, are the two really important leverage points to add on some tactics to the kind of the high level strategy that Pawel gave.

[00:21:14] Hannah Clark: Hmm. Okay. Think that's really valuable insight. Um, but before we move on, does anyone wanna respond to that?

[00:21:23] Andrea Saez: I don't think I would say anything different.

Um, I completely agree. I'm not gonna be controversial on this one. Uh, I think, uh, both, uh, Akash and pal are a hundred percent right on that. The only thing I would add, um, is, you know, as you're gaining alignment, um, make sure that there is alignment, right? Um, that's one of the things where I see a lot of team fails is they'll say yes, and then a week later everybody's running around trying to do their own thing.

Um, so absolutely executive alignment, it has to start from the top. Um, and everybody needs to be aligned around what you're doing, what you're doing, how you're doing it, who you're doing it for, and [00:22:00] the who tends to be the biggest source of misalignment because everybody's trying to, you know, there's no alignment on the ICP, so everyone's trying to sell to someone different.

And when you're trying to sell to different audiences, that's when you start sneaking in features that perhaps don't fit.

[00:22:16] Hannah Clark: Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. We've discussed this before, Andrea, on, on the show. Uh, yeah. That the who? The, what's that? The who always focus on the who.

[00:22:24] Aakash Gupta: Yeah.

[00:22:25] Hannah Clark: Yeah. Um, so, uh, I'll just interject here before we start moving on, uh, 'cause we've got a few things I wanted to call out from the chat here.

Uh, we've got a question as well as, uh, just a recommendation for a book. Um, but just a reminder to everybody that, uh, feel free to add your q and A here. We'll be, uh, getting to that in a few minutes. Um, so, uh, we had a comment here from Yen. A good background overview is Walter Isaacson's book. The Innovators shows how people can always be in the way of, uh, promoting or hampering development.

Um, so that's an interesting one. I, uh. Thanks for the call out there. Um, then Brent also jumped in with a question. Uh, so in [00:23:00] regard to question number two, uh, as in shortsighted feature development, is it also true that sometimes companies release features that are disconnected from the path to vision realization with a full intention to circle back and refine the features?

Um, but however, once a company that gets into the feature factory spiral, it's then tough to get outta that cycle and then it just never manages to return to suboptimal features that were originally intended to be improved. So kind of like a, like a, I guess, feature debt sorta. Is that kind of what you're hinting at there, Brent?

I mean, I'm, I think that there's something to that. Does anyone have anything they wanted to respond?

[00:23:38] Pawel Huryn: Yeah, I'm not sure I understand this comment fully, but, uh, I assume that this is about releasing features that are not ideal or, uh, far from perfect. Uh. At least in my experience, this is exactly what we should do.

So, release features without, uh, um, implementing every possible detail, every corner use case, but [00:24:00] rather do something that solves the problem for maybe 70, maybe 80% of the users for the mosco use cases and just get feedback. Of course, sometimes it might not be possible, but in most cases, in most of the product organizations I worked in, we, we started simple.

Even, even if there was some, uh, design or idea, uh, what we would like to, uh, achieve in four or five months, we edit quickly, got feedback from the users. And also, uh, often after getting this feedback, we improved our, uh, initial assumptions. Because even if you test your designs, you, you run those usability tests and you interview customers, you automate those tests.

And for example, I did it with Mace. Um, the actual results from production when customers start using the real data might be different. Hmm. So I'm 100% for releasing features that are not, uh, ideal.

[00:24:59] Hannah Clark: So I [00:25:00] I I, I wanna toss it to Andrea A. Little bit because, so how does that fit into the strategy? 'cause you mentioned, you know, in your organization you don't necessarily have the budget to kind of release features at that rate, and you have to be more strategic about what you do.

So how, uh, what would you, do you have a different approach or how do you see that?

[00:25:19] Andrea Saez: Uh, no, I agree with, with what Powell said. I mean, you, you should be releasing with intention, right? And not everything needs to be perfect. I think, um, I, I don't wanna make assumptions, but uh, Todd said half-baked. Um, and I think that is something I have seen before where we'll release something and say, okay, we'll get back to improving this later.

And then you just move on to more new stuff. But teams don't go back to make improvements. And I see aka nodding a lot. Um, so maybe you have a, a, a bit to add there, but that is a little bit of that feature trap where it's like, let's just release new, new, new, and then we don't go back and make improvements to, you know, what sometimes feels like very basic stuff, like some [00:26:00] basic usability stuff, um, where we assume that people will just get it because you know, well it's there, so go figure it out type thing.

Ash, would you like to add something?

[00:26:12] Aakash Gupta: Yeah, I think that, that all our commenters are right, like, you know, I think Brent. Todd both are pointing to this phenomena that happens, which is why the feature factory is so bad, is we have this shiny object syndrome. We release half-baked features. We never fix the features afterwards or update them even though we know a bunch of things because we're just moving onto the next shiny object.

And that's one of the things you wanna avoid, right? And so when people are then asking, I think Agua ask like, how do you move out of this? So when people have that syndrome, right, it's about bringing those user insight that, hey, user insight. We, uh, we looked at a hundred session replays, uh, last week.

Three people clicked on this feature [00:27:00] data insight, like of people who you click on this feature, you know, the 30 day retention is 7%. It's like nobody's adopting this feature and nobody's retaining with this feature. You try to bring those insights to the executives and the feature factory leaders, the hippos driving the feature factory.

And because you're speaking their language now and you've brought these insights, hopefully they will allow you to either iterate so it's not half baked. Oftentimes if we're talking about a 7% adoption, like actually get people to see the thing and try it out. But there also seem to be a retention problem.

So fix whatever retention issues there are. So that's one option or the second. And often what people really need to do is just kill features, right? There's way too many features out there that are actually getting in the way of the core job to be done of your user. And this is particularly pernicious in B2B where we all try to become platform companies.

We all try to extend beyond one product. As soon as we hit 10 million a RR, we think we need a second product. [00:28:00] Um, but in fact, like just focusing on that core often is so much more high impact for you.

[00:28:07] Andrea Saez: I think it was Pendo that did a study that said, um, 80% of features don't get used. It's a huge number.

[00:28:14] Hannah Clark: well that kind of, uh, it's a, I think a fitting segue into our final section here, which is, uh, so we are in factory mode now. What, um, so I imagine that a lot of folks decided to tune in today because they're either already working in what they, uh, consider to be a feature factory, um, or they're concerned that you're increasingly going off of the deep end.

So let's assume that, um, changing that model, at least in the short term, is impossible or it's a very long term goal just because of the way that things are currently working in the entrenched, uh, infrastructure of the company. So how can we incrementally adapt our work? Or are, are there any kind of steps that we can take.

Um, from a leadership perspective to kind of get back away from the feature factory, uh, [00:29:00] mindset and kind of, uh, become more value focused.

[00:29:05] Aakash Gupta: If you're the leader, then it's actually incumbent upon you, right? Mm-hmm. So if you're the VP of product, you're the chief product officer, you're whatever title that it is, if you're that top person, right?

Fundamentally, if you're doing your job well, you're always calling out all of the deficiencies in your organization, all of the problems that you guys need to fix. That's actually the job. It's not to like toot like, we are so amazing. We launch all these amazing things. It's like you're there to solve problems 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 that people are pretty responsive. You know, what you do is you say, okay, hey guys, what was your strategy last year? What were all of the features that we committed to building? And how did those perform? How many of them succeeded?

Right? And you take a look at that and you say, okay, 75% of them didn't succeed. Is [00:30:00] that what we want to do this year? If not, right, how are we gonna br chip away at that? How are we gonna break that down? And so again, you're kind of speaking their language. You're not saying, Hey, Marty Kagan says I need to empower my PMs.

And that's what's broken about our product management process. Marty is right about that. But you're speaking the language of the stakeholders. So you're taking what you learn from Marty and you're bringing it to the stakeholders. And so that to me is the job of a great VP of product. And I think Andrea said it in her very first response.

It's like what's led to this feature factory is the lack of a great VP of product or a great chief product officer. I would also say though, sometimes. Founders especially, but some CEOs, they're just hard to work with. And you can have the best VP of product ever and the founder CEO is just gonna force things down anyways.

And so if you're in that scenario, you need to think about playing chess with your career and going somewhere else.

[00:30:55] Andrea Saez: Mm-hmm. I agree. I was actually gonna say exactly that you can [00:31:00] be the best CPO, the best VP of product you can do or try to do all the right things. If you don't have the support of your CEO and the rest of the C level, you're not gonna get anywhere.

Um, it's just, it's not gonna happen. There has to be alignment, like I said, at that C level because once there's real alignment there, then everything's a lot easier. And I have worked with CPOs where they had absolutely no influence and it was really sales that was driving development, not the CPO. Um, the other thing I would add to that is.

Um, having alignment and understanding around measurable user behaviors. Um, and that's obviously part of my book, uh, but a lot of features that are built don't focus on repeatable, scalable behaviors. So things that people are gonna come in and do every single day because they're indispensable to the user.

Sometimes features are just put out to like, like we said earlier, to ship, right? Um, but are they really thinking [00:32:00] about the value to the customer? Is it actually gonna help them solve a problem? Or are we putting out a feature that's making their lives harder? Um, and maybe there's like a whole ethics chat there as well of, you know, how does it impact the, the, the life and, and the behavior and the workflows of the user.

[00:32:16] Pawel Huryn: yeah. I, I agree with everything what has been said so far. Uh, I can add that also from the. Perspective of a product manager, product team that don't have this influence in the organization. It's also often possible to move things in the right direction.

Obviously you want to change the entire organization, how the organization works, but for example, in the past I was able, um, I work at bc, which is a shared resource center for more than 30 banks from Denmark. And, uh, my initiative was the only initiative that escaped safe, uh, so scale agile framework, which is, for me, it's like a, a waterfall with this long term [00:33:00] planning.

Uh, so how we did that was we analyzed the previous initiatives. We, uh, tried to, um. Highlight the problems. So like in the case of CPO, just from the product manager perspective, show the problems and measure the problems with the current approach. And that if we are going to continue one of the most complex initiatives, we'll probably fail, like all the previous ones.

And we suggested an experiments so that our initiative, so that was one core team and four other, uh, that collaborated with us, um, just started working in an agile way without this heavy framework. Um, so the same arguments and it worked. Uh, o obviously we didn't change the entire organization, but yeah, for, for my certificate, it worked pretty well.

[00:33:52] Hannah Clark: Yeah. I really appreciate you chiming in with, uh, the perspective of folks who have a little bit less influence. 'cause I, I'm sure that there are folks who are kind of finding themselves in that, uh, [00:34:00] position where they're not necessarily a VP of product, but, you know, you still wanna try and, uh, make your work as impactful as possible.

[00:34:06] Pawel Huryn: Um, yeah, you can also influence a lot of things that are inside your, um, inside your team. So just don't ask about permission and start collaborating with your designers. Uh, inviting your engineers to brainstorm, uh, about solutions and, uh, rather than preparing everything kind upfront that, uh, talking to the customers alone.

[00:34:28] Hannah Clark: Thanks,

[00:34:28] Pawel Huryn: father.

[00:34:28] Andrea Saez: One thing that I'd like to add, if possible, that, that Powell, I think, um, has brought up is how much hard work that entails. Um, and I was amazed when you said you that what you were just talking was like, how did he do that? Because it is a lot of hard work. Um, and I, I. Most of the time in my career have a life war with aka, where it's like, I'm not gonna bother with this, like, time to find a new job type thing.

Um, but it is really, really difficult, um, to, to do a [00:35:00] transformation like that. Um, so power to anyone that can do that or is going through that because it is draining to your wellbeing, to your mental health, to your every day. Uh, but I think you once, or if you're able to get out of that on the other side, there's a lot of learning as well.

[00:35:18] Hannah Clark: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. That's a, that's definitely an incredible, uh, trajectory to be able to bring into whatever experience you have next, whether you stay at the company or not. Um, so, uh, I did want to take a little bit of time, uh, to just chat about a few things before we move into q and a. Um, so, um, in the meantime, we, we first of all wanna let you know that we've got another event happening on April 24th, uh, which is going to be called a managing Perception with Internal and External Stakeholders.

Um, so, uh, this one's gonna be a little bit about, uh, if, you know, if you find yourself in an executive role for the first time, or you, uh, are a more experienced executive and you're just wanting to, um, get a, a better hold on how you're coming across both to external [00:36:00] parties as well as internal, uh, stakeholders.

We're gonna be speaking about kind of ways to do that. Um, so registration is going to be live soon. Uh, if you are subscribed to our newsletter, then you'll be receiving that next week. Uh, if you wanna follow our speakers also today, uh, I, we've already gotten some great feedback from, uh, folks who have really liked the insights shared so far.

Uh, there's a lot more where that came from. Each one of these folks are amazing, uh, thought leaders. We've got a lot of, uh, great content from, uh, each of them. Uh, Andrea's book, the Product Momentum Gap is available on Amazon. You can look it up there. Um, Ash's newsletter, the Product Growth Newsletter. Uh, we've got that.

Uh, we can get that linked in the chat here. Um, so make sure you subscribe to that. It's a fantastic resource. Uh, and Pawel newsletter, uh, is called Product Compass. Um, Akash and, uh, Pawel have, uh, collaborated on some podcasts, but I know Akash is really active on his podcast as well. Um, so we've got links to everything in the chat.

Please make sure you subscribe to our panelist, uh, stuff 'cause they're putting out great stuff all the time, not just today. Um, and I guess we can move right [00:37:00] along into our q and a. We've got some great questions from our audience today. So, uh, the first one here is from, uh, Aida. I hope I pronounced that correctly.

Uh, so how do we get from feature factory to continue, uh, to, I suppose it's supposed to be continuous user and customer value creation that creates positive business impact. I feel we've touched on this a little bit, but maybe there's some stuff to add. Uh, she says, uh, seems like the customer value piece of the equation has been off obfuscated by a quick profit result.

'cause I subtle plug by Andrea.

actually, you know what, Andrea, if you wanna give maybe Cliffs notes of what you cover in the book, that might be helpful. Uh, literally that. So it

[00:37:45] Andrea Saez: is about bringing together product strategy and customer value. So we talk a lot about customer value, how to identify it, how to track it, how to focus on it, how to bring your team together.

Um, and I think that's, that's a really key part. [00:38:00] So we have a, a little template called the product VCP or the product value Creation Plan. But the key part that's, uh, really, really important, something that Powell touched on earlier, is that it's really not about the product team making those decisions in isolation.

It's about listening to sales. It's about listening to customer success. It's about listening to support and bringing all those key stakeholders into this workshop and collaborating with them and understanding then what, what value means, um, in order to then deliver it.

[00:38:31] Hannah Clark: Yeah, actually if you want a taste of that, uh, we discussed exactly that on the podcast of think about a year ago.

So I'll, I'll find the link to throw into the chat for, uh, those who kind of wanna take a listen and get a sense of, you know, how some of those, uh, principles played out. I think you shared some really interesting anecdotes to kind of frame some of that in practice. Uh, so the podcast episode on the Product Manager podcast was how product leaders are unintentionally hindering business growth.

I'll just link it right here. Um, okay, so next question, uh, from [00:39:00] Parker. So, what tools slash methods do you use to foster strategic discussions and alignment around a common product goal? What has been most effective for you? This is interesting, so a little bit more tactical here. Uh, does anyone wanna jump in on this one?

[00:39:12] Aakash Gupta: If we're trying to, uh, create alignment on a particular goal, the first thing to do is not to, just to suggest this is what the right answer is. Here you go. Let's go for it. Right. Ideally, you want to set up this context with the people who you're not, haven't brought along and say, Hey, I think we may not have the right goal at this point.

Can we go through a process together where we try to figure out the right goal? And then you wanna set up this process in a very collaborative way. Like, what I like to do is actually like work with an analyst or somebody who's super well respected by both parties, some external third party and say, Hey, can we get some sort of like.

Research report or something going and you present that [00:40:00] to us, and then we can talk back and ask questions to you so that you're learning with the people who you disagree with. You're learning about the metrics and the options. Then you have some sort of a brainstorm, like a, a setup brainstorm. Often do it over like Miro, remotely.

It doesn't need to be in person. Like these are the optional metrics and goals that we could be focused on. What are the pros and cons of these options? Let's talk about these together, and then as the PM using the power of the pen to record down, okay, these are the options. These are the pros and cons.

Again, going back to your third party person now and working with them, who's saying like, okay, the data science team has gone and looked at this. We have gone and looked at this. We've, uh, involved some of the PMs, designers and engineers who have been building on this for the last six months as well, to get their feedback on what metrics are easy to move versus not, and then you have a final discussion where it's like.

Again, you're not coming in with the right answer. You're willing to even hear out what the other person says, but you guys make a decision in that meeting. So that's how I like to structure it very [00:41:00] tactically for folks, is kind of a sequence of things, and it takes longer this way, but hopefully you have more buy-in,

[00:41:06] Hannah Clark: Okay, we'll move on to McKayla. We have a revamp request for a product by the business and from the UX team. We wanna properly understand the pain points, gain insights, and understand the journeys.

But so long, um, so far it's been a feature factory and it's disconnected because you, uh, we use many systems to stitch together the ui. Um, but the PM has pushing to do something quick because we already know things, quote unquote, but is not, uh, there's not clear direction. Um, what do you think is a good way to get out of it?

[00:41:33] Pawel Huryn: Yeah. So as I understand it, it's in this case, in this situation, it's a product manager who is pushing features without proper validation.

[00:41:43] Aakash Gupta: So,

[00:41:44] Pawel Huryn: uh, that might be, uh, difficult. But overall, if someone is pushing features, I would try to reverse engineer and ask about the problem this future is solving and then explore, uh, validate the problem and maybe there are other solutions.

[00:42:00] Uh, I would also like to understand if this problem is aligned with the broader, uh, objectives that are currently important for the organization and strategy and company vision. Uh, perhaps someone from the team other than product manager can, can try to reverse engineer or, or at least maybe, if not everything, then, uh, find some inconsistencies between data between what analytics or data analytics funnels.

Uh. Cohort analysis, uh, presents and, and the features that we are building.

[00:42:35] Hannah Clark: Hmm. I think maybe might be helpful context. There must be

[00:42:38] Pawel Huryn: some assumption. Oh, sorry. Yeah. There must be some set of assumptions be behind those features, and I would like to validate those assumptions.

[00:42:48] Hannah Clark: I, I am, I'm also wonder if it'd be helpful context to know Mikayla, uh, what's the position that you play in this team?

Because, um, you're, you're speaking about the pm uh, are you, like, how do [00:43:00] you, what's your relationship to the pm uh, is it might affect how we advise you specifically?

Uh, okay. So she's a newly appointed design lead. would that impact anyone's recommendation?

[00:43:12] Andrea Saez: I don't think so. I agree with Powell. Um, there's two magic questions. What problem are we trying to solve and why? And also who we're solving it for. 'cause don't forget about the who. Um, but yeah, I've, I've been in a situation like that recently and, you know, the product team just wanted to ship, ship, ship, ship because they knew what they were doing and I just, you know, just went in and said, Hey, I don't wanna disrupt.

But I'm just wondering if you can explain the problem to me and the decision making process so that I understand it. Because as a product marketer, I need to sell this and I need to understand the value, and I need to understand the decision making process. Um, and just getting them to work through that logic, you know, um, it's like this little, uh, product problem outline where you can just ask what problem are you trying to solve?

Why for whom? What's the business impact? You know, what's the, what's the customer value we're [00:44:00] delivering? And kind of talk through that logic. Um, and that can kind of help steer the boat with a little bit of influence and, and really get the team to think about like, why are they doing things at the end of the day?

[00:44:10] Hannah Clark: Yeah, taking them to task. Uh, I think that's a great suggestion. Um, just in the name, we have some more questions coming in, so in the name of time we'll move in, but, uh, but yeah, that, I think that was a great chat. Thank you for asking Mikayla. Um, okay, Brent, uh, has our next question here. In an ideal situation, should a company or product become less of a, uh, sorry.

Should a company or product become less of a feature factory as it matures, potentially, can this trend be a signal of misapplication of product teams? Oh, okay. I've got thoughts on this, but I'm curious what,

[00:44:40] Aakash Gupta: Let's see. Hannah's,

[00:44:43] Andrea Saez: yeah, I was gonna say, Hannah, I wanna hear yours. You said you had thoughts.

[00:44:46] Hannah Clark: Okay, given I'm an outsider here really, but, uh, but it seems to me that a company should become, they should be the least of feature factory at the beginning when you really have a specific [00:45:00] goal that you're trying to achieve and a specific user problem that you're trying to solve.

Uh, it kind of seems to me that you become a, like the feature factory creeps in as you make concessions in order to keep your business alive. And so it seems to me it is something that a scaling business is gonna run into a lot more. Um, but I like full disclosure, like I have not been in the position to have to deal with these concerns.

So, uh, I don't know. Fact check me.

[00:45:33] Aakash Gupta: I think they're probably like roughly equivalent percentages at all life stages. Sometimes when you're really early on, you feel like, okay, all we need to do is just like copy this other product, just like fully copy it, you know, like, uh, and then we're gonna, so everything is clear, like it's just a future factor.

Like, you guys, you're just gonna go build gong's, call recorder now. Just go build that now. Like, don't you have the exact roadmap right there? Like, can't you just see it? So I think that future [00:46:00] factory, they can, it can hit in anywhere really though. What you wanna think about, regardless of what environment you are in.

Is, what are the parts of the feature factory that are hurting me? And from that, it's really like, am I not able to deliver an ROI on my salary? Like if I'm being paid $150,000, like an average pm, um, am I generating $150,000 of profit for the company? Because if I'm not, then the future factor is really becoming a problem for me and I need to start to fix those areas one by one.

And so, um, in terms of the sociology of what percentage there are, I personally think that they're probably everywhere. And you'll see really good companies that are huge, like enterprise, like I think meta is an example that a lot of people hold up where like, hey, PMs, they're actually empowered to do stuff.

But then there's also series C companies, there's series A companies. I think even what I was hearing is the recent open AI launch of image [00:47:00] generation. Like it wasn't like a Sam like said we need to ship a much better image generation today. It was like. The researchers and engineers working at Open Eye uncovered these new things and they brought them up.

So there's even open eye stage $300 billion companies that are doing great. So at every stage you'll find a, a similar proportion, which is like more than 50% feature factory.

[00:47:22] Hannah Clark: Thanks for jumping in. Gosh. Um, so I'll move on to Sahi, uh, Shashi's question, what are some of the value added benefits that a product manager coming from a business and technical hybrid background brings to the table versus a purely technical background product manager when it comes to features and design?

I

[00:47:38] Andrea Saez: do think that there is a, a link in that, and I could be a hundred percent wrong in this, but in my very biased experience, tech, purely technical PMs tend to lack.

Business focus and at the end of the day, we're all building stuff to sell. Um, I'm not [00:48:00] suggesting everyone should be a hundred percent RI focused, but just having that sense of we are building something that needs to be sold and how do our decisions impact the business and ROI and all of that. PMs with a business background will understand that from the beginning and their decisions will be targeted that way.

Whereas Technic sometimes technical PMs are just like focused on the technical side of things, but not necessarily worried about that return on investment or what that looks like. Um, a really great example of this is I've been in situations where we're talking about, you know, building a particular feature or I'm jumping in at a point where this has already been done and I'm jumping in at the end and my first question will be, have we thought about how we sell this?

And everyone's like, well, nope. I'm like, well, that should have been the first question. How are we selling it? Who are we selling it to? If you're building, you know, if you, you're a B2B and you have everything from like an individual to an enterprise, um, [00:49:00] package is the feature that you're building set up to take the customer through that journey.

Because an enterprise customer is not gonna have the same problem as an individual in a pre-seed startup wanting to use your product. And not a lot of people, um, might go through, you know, that, that thought process. If they don't have that business background, uh, that could be biased, that could be wrong.

So feel free to correct me on that.

[00:49:25] Aakash Gupta: Yeah, I think he's just trying to ask, like he probably has a technical business background and he is comparing himself to people with a purely technical background and wondering like, what advantage can he bring? Well, we spent a lot of time talking about impact, right?

In today's conversation, the impact of your work. And so I think if you have a business background, try to think about leading on those types of PM skills. Build the growth model for your team, impact size all your features, write really great feature results writeups. So always try to play to your strengths and don't worry so much about what other [00:50:00] people are doing.

You know, it's up to those technical PMs to learn the business skills. To be honest, they're not that hard. Um, so most technical PMs can learn them pretty easily, uh, and just focus on yourself. Like, how do I, you leverage my strengths. If I'm really strong in Excel, do more Excel stuff as a pm. That's kind of the magic of the PM role is you can kind of make it your own.

[00:50:22] Andrea Saez: A hundred percent agree with that.

[00:50:24] Aakash Gupta: Mm-hmm.

[00:50:24] Hannah Clark: Uh, we also had a question from Todd that went straight to Pawel, but it looks like Pablo answered it in the chat. Um, but just so that we can kinda, uh, call it out for anyone who might be listening to the recording. Um, so Pa, so Todd said, Pablo, you mentioned earlier that you'd like to keep all insights at what point?

Oh, I just lost it here. Uh, at what point did, did you turn insights into backlog items? Our backlog feels like the feature factory floor. Do you recommend archiving backlog items that are older than 12 months? Um, Pawel, would you mind just, uh, responding to that question so that others can kind of take away from it?

[00:50:55] Pawel Huryn: Uh, yes. So first I'm not sure I, [00:51:00] me I really mentioned keeping all the insights. What I might have mentioned is, uh, leveraging insights from different sources. So not just customer interviews, but also stakeholders, market research, data analytics, surveys, and so on. Uh, so this is the first thing. And when it comes to organizing insights and product back look items I have always avoided placing.

User stories or features in the product backlog for the developers prematurely. So I would rather complete the discovery, share the designs, uh, test the key assumptions, share, share our findings with, with the organization, and only after we get enough confidence than, uh, split it into user stories and find with the team or user stories or other format if someone uses something else.

So it's like having two backlogs, though. It doesn't have to be the same tool. It can be just myro or [00:52:00] some other visual tool to, to collect those insights, uh, and connect them to user needs.

And when it comes to, uh, iv, there was another question. Uh, I would typically just get rid, are high and height, all the items that are sitting in the backlog for too long because it's, if the product backlog, uh, has more than let's say 8,100 elements, it's, it's not manageable.

So those, those items in my experience, will never be tackled. And if they are important, they will, they will be Bri about, uh, Bri again, bring up again.

[00:52:38] Hannah Clark: I guess we'll have to wrap it because we've, we've just cut so many questions here and not enough time. Um, so, uh, thank you for everyone for joining. We do have a survey posted to the chat, uh, just to get a sense of how you felt about this, uh, session where they found it to be valuable.

We'd love to hear your feedback. Please be honest. We love to make these better. Uh, and of course a huge thank you to our panelists for volunteering their time today. [00:53:00] So, panelists, thank you so much Akash, Andrea Pawel. It was really fun, uh, and very informative session and everybody. Um, I just want to thank everybody for, uh, participating in our event today and being such an engaged audience.

Uh, we hope to see you next time.