Product Analytics in a feature factory

There were some heated discussions in the product world some months ago when two product realities clashed significantly.

On the one hand, you have the ideal picture of product management: a bunch of really smart people who take a lot of care in product discovery and research (Lenny's podcast with Marty was a good example covering this: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/product-management-theater-marty).

They excel at prioritizing different initiatives based on their findings. Then, they test features with a small set of users, supported by a well-defined measuring system. Once released, they measure performance, collect feedback, and either iterate on features or develop adjacent ones. It's this ideal product-building machine that creates minimal waste while making significant progress.

But on the other hand, you have the feature factories. These are the little dirty secrets of product management. In theory, you think, "Oh, I work in product, so that's great—I can shape things." But the truth is that there are often other forces in your company telling you what to build. I even know product teams without anyone directing them who are still feature factories because the head of product doesn't really care, or the whole team doesn't care. They're just randomly building stuff. Or as Marty calls them: "Product Management theater".

The heartbeat of a product team is a feature release. A product team starts getting questioned when they can't produce features anymore. "Hey, why don't you just build a new feature?"