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Mind the Product

Product Management

Sunday Rewind: Whose job is it anyway? The rise of Product Ops and why it deserves to be an independent function

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B2B product management

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Andres is a freelance writer and digital marketer with a background in engineering and a keen interest in the latest technology advancements. He currently helps tech companies and startups tell their stories by turning their complex ideas into easy to understand material. You can reach out to him on LinkedIn

Andres Phillips

<p>The best of products can suffer from feature bloat. In this ProductTank Linz talk, <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/yoursproductly/?originalSubdomain=de" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Ravi Kumar Sapata</a></span>, senior product manager at IONOS, gives us two approaches to avoid turning our product into a feature factory.</p>
<p></p>
<p>The key points of his talk include:</p>
<ul>
<li>Problems of a feature factory product</li>
<li>Tactical approaches to prevent a feature factory</li>
<li>Strategic approaches to prevent a feature factory</li>
</ul>
<h2>Problems of a feature factory product</h2>
<p>Ravi explains that a feature factory product is filled with non-performing features. This causes an accumulation of technical debt and increased maintenance costs, leading to lower customer satisfaction and a lack of market differentiation.</p>
<p>Feature problems can arise because many small features have an iceberg problem. They may seem to be small features but turn out to have huge actual costs. This can occur when product managers aren’t shipping any new products and decide to ship new features instead, which causes problems.</p>
<h2>Tactical approaches to prevent a feature factory</h2>
<p>Two ways allow product managers to avoid turning their product into a feature factory; a tactical approach that focuses on the decisions taken daily and a strategic approach that focuses on the bigger picture.</p>
<p>For a tactical approach, Ravi says to focus on becoming more outcome-oriented. Instead of being output-oriented and celebrating the number of features shipped, product teams should focus on the number of problems solved and the positive impact on their customers. When an outcome mindset is used, product managers can gather feedback from customers to test their initial hypotheses regarding a new feature. Ravi suggests implementing a done ritual to avoid a feature factory and rigorously follow through to determine if a new feature is successful before deciding to either further iterate or pull out a feature.</p>
<p>A second tactical approach is to conduct a feature audit to provide a transparent view of how features are being used. By taking stock of feature adoption and usage, you can decide to kill an underperforming feature or potentially find ways to increase adoption.</p>
<h2>Strategic approaches to avoid a feature factory</h2>
<p>As many products evolve throughout the lifecycle, they may become mature and attempt to serve everyone. In cases like this, products can be easily disrupted by smaller niche markets. To avoid this situation, product managers should segment customers based on needs, jobs, and personas and then unbundle their products to offer different tiers and pricing options.</p>
<p>The key takeaway from this talk is that regular assessments are necessary to ensure that you’re still serving your customers properly and avoiding the feature factory problem.</p>
<h2>Enjoy more from ProductTank</h2>
<p>ProductTanks are informal meetups, created by <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/about/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Mind the Product</a></span>, to bring local product people together and to enable speakers to share amazing product insights. Today we have ProductTanks in more than 200 cities across the globe and there’s probably one near you.</p>
<p>Learn more about <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/producttank-about/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">ProductTank</a></span> – find your local meetup, explore more ProductTank content, see the latest ProductTank news, and discover ways to get involved!</p>

core/freeform

Product Management Process

How to F.A.I.L. better in product by Marc Abraham

Fighting product-market drift by Dave Wascha

Building a digital product organisation, brick by brick by Nils Michaelis

Learnings from London: Going from Meh to Awesome by Shiva Rajaraman

The art of product management with Ken Norton

Using principles to make better decisions faster by Martin Eriksson

Rethinking delivery with product operations in the age of product

What’s stopping teams from running experiments by Cameron Savage

Top 7 signs you’re in a bad product system by Scott Williamson

How to bring product thinking to any team by Merissa Silk

How to avoid turning your product into a feature factory by Ravi Kumar Sapata

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