Feature Factory
A feature factory is an organization where product teams focus on building and shipping features rather than driving outcomes. In a feature factory, teams are measured by how much they build and when they deliver it—not by the impact those features have on customers or the business.
The term captures the idea that teams become assembly lines for features, cranking out outputs without deeply understanding whether those features create value.
What are the common characteristics of a feature factory?
Feature factories share several telltale attributes:
- Top-down feature requests from executives, sales teams, or other stakeholders who tell teams exactly what to build
- Roadmaps with delivery dates that lock teams into building specific solutions 12 months out
- Annual project funding rather than outcome-based investment in teams
- Limited customer access where sales or customer success teams own customer relationships and product teams learn through intermediaries
- Success metrics based on shipping rather than impact or outcomes
In this environment, teams keep up with competition by copying features rather than finding their own unique value proposition. Discovery work takes a back seat to delivery because backlogs are already full of features to build.
Why is the feature factory model a problem?
The fundamental issue with the feature factory model is that building more features doesn't automatically create a better product. Teams aren't one or two or three features away from success—this is the fallacy of the feature factory.
When teams focus exclusively on outputs, they miss the opportunity to solve the right problems for customers. They build features that may not create value, waste engineering effort, and fail to drive meaningful business results.
As Melissa Perri describes in her book "The Build Trap," feature factories keep teams busy without ensuring that busyness translates into value creation.
How can teams move beyond the feature factory?
The path out of a feature factory starts with small steps toward continuous discovery. Teams don't need permission to begin identifying the hidden assumptions behind their feature ideas or to start story mapping solutions to understand customer effort.
Over time, teams can build momentum by interviewing customers together, creating shared understanding across the product trio. The goal is to shift from output-focused thinking—"We're building X because someone asked for it"—to outcome-focused thinking—"We want outcome Y, how might we get there?"
This transformation takes time and commitment, but it allows teams to move from simply shipping features to creating real customer and business value.
Learn more:
- Product in Practice: Shifting from a Feature Factory to Continuous Discovery at Doodle
- Everyone Can Do Continuous Discovery—Even You! Here's How
Related terms:
- Output
- Outcome
- Outcomes Over Outputs
- Continuous Discovery
Last Updated: October 25, 2025