The Dopamine Trap of Feature Factories: Why We Celebrate Features and How to Focus on True Impact

If you’ve ever experienced a rush of satisfaction when a feature goes live, you’re not alone. It’s especially rewarding when you’re a user of your own product and see the feature working as intended. As a product manager, I know the feeling well–seeing a feature released and functioning smoothly can make me proud and lift my mood for the entire day.

But have you ever wondered what’s behind that dopamine boost?

• Is it because our revenue has tripled?
• Have we acquired thousands of new users?
• Or perhaps received glowing feedback from our loyal customers?

The truth is, that these outcomes often take time to materialize. The impact of a feature on our business and users might not be evident for weeks or even months.

So, what exactly are we celebrating?

This guide is for product teams who find themselves overly focused on outputs rather than outcomes. I’ll explore the psychological reasons behind the satisfaction of feature releases and offer strategies to shift our focus to what truly matters: outcomes.

Our Brains Make Us Love Feature Factories

If you’re unfamiliar with the term, a feature factory is, as ProductPlan describes it, “a business focused on building features rather than solving problems for customers.” Rather than concentrating on outcomes, this type of company prioritizes outputs. Although the drawbacks of feature factories have been discussed extensively, and product management has increasingly sought to avoid this pitfall, it’s still easy to fall into the feature factory trap. I believe there are at least three psychological reasons for this.

Faster Gratification

In psychology, two key concepts related to gratification are instant gratification and delayed gratification. Our brains are wired to crave instant gratification. As PositivePsychology puts it, “It’s a natural human urge to want good things and to want them NOW.” In contrast, delayed gratification involves resisting the urge for an immediate reward in favor of a more valuable reward in the future (Britannica).

Although implementing and deploying a feature can take time and isn’t truly instant gratification, it still provides a sense of “faster gratification.” This is because the satisfaction of seeing a feature go live occurs sooner than observing significant improvements in business metrics. This preference for faster gratification drives teams to pursue quick wins, such as feature releases, even if these quick wins don’t contribute to long-term success.

Being Invested

As a member of a product team, you can become deeply involved in your work, developing a strong attachment to the features and projects you work on. This is especially true if you came up with the idea, contributed to the vision, and played a role in the design and implementation. It’s natural to feel proud and excited about releasing a feature you’ve put so much time and effort into.

This strong investment can also lead to cognitive biases, such as the sunk cost fallacy. This fallacy describes our tendency to keep going with a project we’ve invested a lot in, even when it no longer makes sense (Asana). When we’re emotionally invested, it’s hard to let go, making it easier to push for a feature release and celebrate it. This attachment can also lead to confirmation bias, where we look for evidence that supports the feature’s value while ignoring signs that it might not actually meet users' needs.

Tangible Results in a Digital World

Features are one of the few “tangible” results in a digital world. Often, our work as product teams can feel disconnected from reality. We produce artefacts that only exist digitally, such as documents, prototypes, and mockups, which rarely have a real-world impact. It’s only when a feature is released that it becomes “tangible” and can make a real difference. Some people working on digital projects turn to hobbies like woodworking, painting, or furniture repair as a way to create something physical and see immediate results.

Releasing a feature or improvement in your digital product offers a similar sense of tangibility. It’s something you can interact with and share with others, providing a visible and appreciated result.

Why Feature Factories are Problematic

Itamar Gilad provides a clear explanation of why the feature factory model is flawed. In a traditional factory, every unit produced creates value because it can be sold for profit. Thus, more output equals more value. While I don’t fully agree with the notion that “every unit produced creates some value” given my sustainability-oriented mindset, I understand his point.

In software development, however, this doesn’t hold true. We often treat software development like a factory, but not everything we produce actually adds real value. In a feature factory, we end up with bloated, hard-to-maintain products featuring functionalities that few users find valuable. This mindset can lead to accumulating technical debt, reduced innovation, and growing user dissatisfaction. Over time, these issues compound, making it harder to maintain product quality, stifling creativity, and causing users to seek better alternatives. Ultimately, this can undermine a company’s competitive edge and long-term success.

Recent trends in product management have introduced techniques like continuous product discovery and hypothesis validation, thanks to experts like Teresa Torres. Despite this, the 2023 State of Product Management Report by ProductPlan shows that feature factories remain a major challenge: 54% of roadmaps are designed around outputs, while only 44% focus on outcomes. The shift towards an outcome-oriented approach is slow and challenging.

How to Move Away From the Feature Factory Mindset

Understanding why we’re drawn to features is just the beginning. The real challenge is shifting our focus from outputs to outcomes.

Our brains are wired to seek gratification and tangible results, making it difficult to detach from the products we work on. Even if we strive to move away from this mindset, our natural inclination to care about our work and seek immediate rewards remains.

How can we use these brain biases to our advantage while shifting away from a feature-factory mindset? It all comes to making outcomes more tangible for your team and employing positive reinforcement based on outcomes. Here are the three key actions to take to shift away from a feature factory mindset.

Firstly, during the planning stage, set specific, actionable goals that your team can directly influence. Rather than focusing on lagging indicators, aim for measurable product outcomes that can be impacted immediately by feature releases or improvements. Teresa Torres, in Continuous Discovery Habits, suggests setting product outcomes as goals because they reflect changes in customer behaviour that occur as soon as a feature is live. Additionally, ensure that metric tracking is readily accessible and emphasise its importance with regular team check-ins.

Secondly, while it’s important to recognise the team’s effort in delivering features, celebrate their achievement of goals even more. Managers should provide strategic feedback that encourages an outcome-focused mindset and reinforces positive behaviours.

Finally, engage more with users to understand how your work has affected their lives and share this feedback with your team, and potentially the entire company. This approach turns outcomes into tangible results through personal stories that resonate more deeply than raw data alone.

To effectively shift away from the feature factory mindset, focus on setting clear, actionable outcomes, celebrate genuine value-driven successes, and continuously seek user feedback to align your team with what truly matters. Although the transition might be challenging, it will ultimately lead to a stronger team, better products, and overall company growth.

Hey, I’m Valeria! Thanks for reading my article. This is my first piece for Hackernoon, and I'd love to hear your feedback. Here, I’ll be sharing insights on product management, product design, and sustainability, so stay tuned for more. See you in the next one! 👋