Feature creep is the tendency to add more and more features to a product without a clear strategy or prioritization. It can result in a bloated, complex, and expensive product that fails to meet customer needs and expectations. As a product manager, how can you avoid feature creep and deliver a focused and valuable product? Here are some tips to help you.
Before you start developing or adding features, you need to have a clear and shared understanding of the product's scope and vision. What problem are you solving, who are you solving it for, and what are the key benefits and outcomes? Write down your product vision statement and use it as a guide and a filter for any feature requests or ideas. Communicate your vision to your stakeholders, team, and customers and get their feedback and alignment.
Feature Creep or Scope Creep can not only result in a Complex Product but also lead to a situation of mistrust between the stakeholders involved in its development. It further creates delays, and confusion among customers and deviation from the Product Strategy. As a Product Manager, one should have laser sharp clarity about the Product Vision, set the priorities of various features in Roadmap accordingly. Any feature that doesn't align with the vision of the product needs to be seriously thought upon before being discussed among the stakeholders. Critical Evaluation of any peripheral Feature in terms of impact it can create and user problem it can solve needs to be considered even if scope of Product needs to be widened.
Before diving into development, having a crystal-clear product vision is paramount. ?? Define the problem, target audience, and key benefits. ?? Let this vision be your North Star, guiding feature requests and ensuring alignment. ?? Share it, gather feedback, and watch your product soar!
Invest more time on the problem and opportunity space instead of the solution space. Most visions lack customer insight. Most scopes focus on limited understand of user pains. Most solutions fail at addressing what people actually want, and never 10x the value to make you drop the incumbent for a risky new entrant. Find the magical details that will make a customer say “wow this changes everything” and be laser focused on delivering that scope.
Clear product vision must include a broader idea of what problem you would like to solve for your specific customer segment. With this clear vision one can start defining the scope of different use cases you would like to start solving for customers. Having this clarity between all the stakeholders including PMs helps you march toward a shared goal and ultimately product success.
Feature creep often becomes particularly noticeable when new technologies emerge or when technology is widely touted as being disruptive. While integrating these trendy technologies can make it easier to sell the product to clients by showcasing it as cutting-edge, the costs can be steep. Downsides of Feature Creep 1. User Experience: Excessive features often make their way into the product without adequate user research, resulting in a compromised user experience. 2. System Complexity: Each new feature increases the overall complexity of the system, making it more challenging to maintain and update. 3. Product Delays: The continual addition of features can cause significant delays in the product's delivery timeline.
Not all features are created equal. Some are essential, some are nice to have, and some are unnecessary or harmful. As a product manager, you need to prioritize and validate features based on their value, feasibility, and alignment with your vision. Use a framework like the MoSCoW method (Must have, Should have, Could have, Won't have) or the RICE score (Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort) to rank and compare features. Validate your assumptions and hypotheses with data and user research. Say no to features that don't add value or don't fit your vision.
While prioritization frameworks help, they can be time-consuming and frustrating for engineers when they are asked to size a whole lot of features. The important thing is to first divide what you are building into a. big rocks - these are high-effort, high-value features that can move your north star metric, b. pebbles and c. sand. As long as the big rocks are taken care of pebbles and sand can still make it to your roadmap without a lot of PM input. These give engineers the autonomy and intermittent feature releases, which keeps everyone happy. No more than 3 big rocks should make it to your roadmap every quarter or sometimes even during the half. The distinction between these also allows you to easily say no.
Indeed, the art of feature prioritization is a pivotal skill in product management. ?? Utilizing frameworks like MoSCoW or RICE empowers you to discern between the essential and the merely desirable. ?? Always validate assumptions with rigorous data and user insights. Saying 'no' to divergent features preserves the product's focus and ensures alignment with the vision. ??
Prioritization starts at the North Star. Know what is the one metric that matters, and distill the principles of prioritization from that single outcome. When prioritizing, don’t just think at feature level but also at the feature scope itself. When validating, focus on discovering what you can de-prioritize and what you need to double down. Validation has that sole purpose, nothing else.
Whenever a new feature idea or complex technical solution comes in (whether by the product manager itself, the designer, the dev team, a stakeholder...), always go back to the original vision, especially if you're trying to launch a new product, and ask yourself: is this really important for the user experience? What are the cons of not adding this feature in the scope? Can I still deliver a good experience by launching with the original scope? Does the product still make sense if we had this feature as part of the experience? I find that intuition and a good product sense are usually more important than whatever prioritization table you can come up with, where the input are usually arbitrary anyway.
Too often, feature creep can lead to feature bloat, which is really just a sign that the product is focused on outputs (how many things did we deliver in a period of time) instead of outcomes (how much did we move the needle for customers and our business). Frameworks can be helpful to prioritize features, although my experience is that frameworks are only helpful if there is a mature product culture in the company. Many companies do not have a product culture and mindset -- instead, they (typically) have a project mindset, which is inherently time and output driven, not value and benefit driven.
Feature creep often happens when you try to please everyone or respond to every feedback or request. As a product manager, you need to manage expectations and feedback from your stakeholders, team, and customers. Explain the rationale behind your decisions and priorities. Show them the value and impact of your product and how it solves their problems. Listen to their feedback and concerns, but don't let them dictate your roadmap. Be transparent and consistent in your communication and collaboration.
Feature creep is a common pitfall in product management, often stemming from the desire to accommodate everyone. ??? To avoid this, manage expectations by explaining your decisions and the product's value. ?? Showcase how it addresses problems. Listen to feedback, but maintain control over your roadmap
In my opinion, earlier perspectives are valuable such as define clear product goals, objectives and what’s the target consumer group. One needs to define a clear problem that the product would be solving, keep it at the core of overall goal than trying to solve multiple problems with the same product. Being a product manager - been there done that, the basic solution is to think of adding yet another product into the portfolio than landing up into the creepy product. Make one but make it the best than your consumer will strive. Stick to the roadmap so that the product evolves with a consistency. Adopt the agile development method and stress on involving stakeholders and gather what’s important in a feedback loop.
Ensure scope clarity. Write down comprehensive specifications. For example, if you specify in a generic requirement for search terms that search will include user identifiers for a search page of customer service representative software, you are leaving room for ambiguity. You are not specifying the list of identifiers that are expected—the list can be as simple as username and email ID, but no social login support. Mention constraints like things that cannot be included. Take time to review potential edge cases and plan for risks from the beginning, and any edge scenarios that may not be part of your happy path to a MVP should be specified.
Happiness is the difference between reality and expectations. You don’t want the former to be smaller than the latter. At the same time, if you underpromise too much you’ll lack ambition. Thread this line carefully. And when underpromising, guarantee you overdeliver. It will push the bar next time, but keep iterating consistently so you overdeliver every time. Strong expectation management is done using the currency of communication. Never assume your manager or stakeholders are aware of progress. Choose to over-communicate.
Feedback is golden, but it's crucial to discern between a vocal few and a genuine need. While stakeholders value being heard, they also appreciate understanding the "why" behind decisions. It's not always about saying "no", but perhaps "not now." Ultimately, it's about aligning feedback with the product's core goals, ensuring you're leading the product to its best version without losing sight of its essence.
A roadmap is a strategic tool that helps you plan and communicate your product direction and goals. It shows what features and initiatives you are working on, why, and when. A roadmap can help you avoid feature creep by providing a clear and visible overview of your product scope and vision. It can also help you align your resources and efforts with your priorities and deadlines. Set and follow a roadmap that is realistic, flexible, and outcome-oriented. Review and update it regularly based on your learnings and feedback.
A roadmap, your product's compass. It guides your direction, communicates goals, and wards off feature creep. ?? With clarity on what, why, and when, it aligns resources and efforts effectively. Ensure it's realistic, flexible, and outcome-focused. ?? Regular review and updates based on learning and feedback are the keys to success.
The best roadmaps are not the best projects, but the ones that continuously ship new experiments that yield either results or learnings. As a complement, strong roadmaps have great feedback loops, so they continuously get better at adjusting, increasing velocity, augmenting breadth, and improving feature quality. At the same time, having strong project management is key on excelling at product roadmapping. The best roadmaps tell a story, not a waterfall.
Include a process to track great ideas. When you communicate to your executive stakeholders and the other teams across your company that you are open to product suggestions, but that those suggestions will have to wait their turn to get their fair hearings, you will be reinforcing to everyone in the organization your commitment to adhering to the scope of your product’s existing plan.
Your roadmap isn't just a guide—it's the very essence of your product's future. Defend it with rigor. Every feature, every enhancement, must earn its place. While ideas might be a dime a dozen, a cluttered backlog is a costly misstep. The roadmap is your bulwark against the siren song of feature creep, and it must be rooted firmly in strategic vision over fleeting requests. It's more than a plan; it's a commitment. Though it can evolve, it must never deviate from its core mission. Your product deserves a clear, purposeful trajectory. So, guard your roadmap zealously, continually refining its course, and ensuring every step taken is one of intention, not impulse.
From my experience, roadmap is not a linear path. It's a closed loop system that needs to regularly incorporate feedback from any changes in market and industry trends. Thus, the point from the feature creep above definition about that needs to be remembered is issue is not with adding/updating feature as environment adapts but do so with an updated strategy/roadmap in mind.
Feature creep can also happen when you try to deliver a perfect product in one go or when you don't test and improve your product based on user feedback. As a product manager, you need to iterate and refine your product by following an agile and user-centric approach. Deliver small and frequent increments of value to your customers and get their feedback. Learn from your experiments and metrics and use them to inform your next steps. Keep your product simple, usable, and relevant.
As product managers, an agile, user-centric approach is our compass. Deliver value in small, frequent increments, gather feedback, and iterate. Learn from experiments and metrics to refine our path. Simplicity, usability, and relevance are our guiding stars.??
Feature creep sneaks in when chasing perfection or neglecting user feedback. Embrace an agile, user-centric mindset. Deliver value incrementally, gather feedback, then refine. Every metric and user insight should shape your product's evolution, keeping it streamlined and pertinent. Don't aim for perfect; aim for continuous improvement.
Feature creep can result from pursuing perfection or ignoring user feedback. As a product manager, embrace agility and user-centricity. Deliver frequent, incremental value, seeking constant user input. Learn from experiments and metrics to inform your path. Keep the product simple, usable, and relevant for continuous improvement.
Clearly define your expected outcome in numbers that are some-how related to your North star metric. Be realistic but severe in apprasing your features and setting success metrics. The number of clicks over a button is a vanity metrics if it does not have a direct correlation with NS.
Before start to develop something new, User feedback is very important. They use the product so they can highlight you unexpected points of improvement. They will buy and use the product so is mandatory to satisfy their needs. You can reach them in a physical, digital or hybrid mode but the most important point is to collect a trusted feedback.
Apart from the key points like Defining Vision, Prioritizing Features, and Following a Roadmap which are mentioned above, PMs should focus on building a highly Collaborative Environment where questions are asked among the associated stakeholders in the team. Each and every member feels highly associated with the product and understands the idea behind and critically evaluates the thought process behind any feature and outcome expected from it. Such an environment will not allow deviation from the vision and random features will not find its way to the Product Roadmap. PMs would be more careful before considering any such feature requests from business or any other source.
Build “scope monitoring” into your routine.Changes to scope can be uncontrolled, resulting in scope creep, or controlled, resulting in documented changes to the requirements.Avoid losing sight of your original strategic plan and the priorities you’ve set for your product by referring to them regularly. Managing scope creep then boils down to controlling those changes in scope via a change control process.
All of the above applies to consumer led products. For regulation led products I find the following helps: very clear understanding of the evolution of the domain. Both past and future. This way you will know when to dig in and add the new feature or when to opt for the workaround istead. It’s a delicate balance ;)
In the world of product management, there's a valuable lesson in the "80/20 rule," or the Pareto Principle. It suggests that roughly 80% of outcomes come from 20% of efforts. When managing a product, it's crucial to identify and focus on the most impactful features and improvements, rather than attempting to satisfy every request or detail. This principle underscores the importance of prioritization and maintaining a clear product vision to avoid feature creep and ensure your product's success.
Guidance for Product Managers 1. Adhere to Simplicity: Product Managers should adhere to a basic principle: "If it's too complicated to implement, it's worth reconsidering." 2. Question the Necessity: Prior to incorporating new features, ask two crucial questions: "Does this actually address the problem we're aiming to solve?" and "What real value does it offer to the customer?" 3. Stakeholder Alignment: Keep an open line of communication with all stakeholders, including developers, designers, and especially users. Consistent communication can help in setting realistic expectations and making informed decisions about feature additions. By keeping these guidelines in mind, PMs can better manage the risks associated with feature creep.