Title: Before You Plan Your Product Roadmap
Context: Some of your users may use some of your features some of the time but if none of your users are using all of your features any of the time, you’ve got a problem…I think.
Synopsis: New features are the lifeblood of any successful product. You can’t argue with this logic. It’s conventional wisdom after all. And surely once you introduce a feature, you can never, ever, ever get rid of it. These are the facts. I mean how could you? Obviously once you’ve added a new feature, everyone is going to start using it. How do you know? Because you added it. What choice would they have? It’s right freaking there staring them in the face (3 layers of navigation deep but the point stands) and all of your users asked for it so you gave it to them and yes, they are very, very welcome by the way. Feature bloat? Complexity? UI overload? Obviously you don’t understand the first thing about product design because the only thing people want is more functionality. Sure, you’ll get around to iterating on current product features and sorting through the accumulated usage metrics just as soon as you work through this looooooong backlog of brand-spankin’ new, user requested—nay, demanded!—features. Man, making awesome stuff is so easy. Now if only you could figure out why your users are so frustrated…
Best Bit: “Lets face it, feature audits sound boring, maybe rebranding them as the Lean Feature Analysis Hack™ will make them seem more hip.”
via blog.intercom.io
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