The feature factory is dead. Long live the people factory.
After two decades of product leadership evolution, we’ve finally reached a tipping point. The most successful product organisations are no longer measured solely by feature velocity or release cadence, they’re optimised for human potential, both for their teams and their users. Whilst leaning into users, running JTBD studies and dialling in a real world empathetic understanding of how customers might interact with your products we now find ourselves in a position of doing the same with our own people, in our own teams.
It took a while but after trying for many years to implement ‘best practice’ in organisations I have realised that a much more empathetic approach is needed than simply a ‘standard’ or model that can be applied cookie cutter style to a company.
The Feature Factory Fallacy
John Cutler, who coined the term “feature factory,” described it as a business focused on building features rather than solving problems for customers. In his seminal piece “12 Signs You’re Working in a Feature Factory,” Cutler identified the core problem: teams do not measure the impact of their work, dealing in feature and project assignments rather than compelling missions.
Traditional product organisations operate like manufacturing plants: requirements flow in, features flow out. Product managers become project coordinators, engineers become code machines, and designers become pixel pushers. The human element becomes an inconvenient variable to optimise away.
This approach worked when software was primarily a tool. Now that software shapes human behaviour, relationships, and society itself, we need product teams that understand the full spectrum of human experience.
Marty Cagan, author of two of the most foundational books for product teams (Inspired and Empowered) and founder of Silicon Valley Product Group, distinguishes between what he calls “mercenaries vs missionaries” – mercenaries are hired guns, there to write code and go home, while missionaries are driven by a deeper sense of purpose. It might seem like common sense but only in recent years have I seen leaders understand that pushing their teams into oblivion via relentless pace or unreasonable goals might NOT be the way in which great products are made or successful. By applying the same mantra that we once reserved for our users and bring that to our own we run our own better ‘product’ in our people function.
People that are understood, feel valued and treated with respect will perform better. They will have more of a vested interest in what they bring in the day-to-day workings – i.e. delivering value for users.
Building People-Centric Product Teams
1. Hire for Emotional Intelligence, Train for Technical Skills The best product managers aren’t necessarily those with the most prestigious technical backgrounds (Yes, Google) they’re individuals who can navigate complex human dynamics whilst maintaining technical credibility. Look for candidates who ask about team culture during interviews, not just technology stack.
2. Structure Teams Around Human Rhythms, Not Sprint Rhythms Scrum and Kanban are tools, not gospel. High-performing product teams adapt their processes to accommodate human creativity cycles. Some of the best product insights emerge during informal conversations, not stand-up meetings. So don’t throw process out the window but caveat it with flexibility and understanding that the one-size-fits-all won’t necessarily work for you.
3. Measure Team Health Alongside Product Health Track metrics like psychological safety scores, learning velocity (how quickly team members acquire new skills), and cross-functional collaboration quality. These leading indicators predict product success more reliably than traditional velocity metrics.
Case Study: Spotify’s Squad Model Revisited
Spotify’s famous squad model wasn’t revolutionary because of its technical architecture, it succeeded because it prioritised human autonomy and purpose. Each squad operated with the empathy to understand their users deeply and the psychological safety to experiment boldly.
However, many organisations copying Spotify’s structure missed the underlying human dynamics that made it work. They focused on the org chart, not the empathy and trust that enabled effective collaboration within that structure. They didn’t get what was really happening – the structure was not necessarily the win, it was the how that drove success.
As Cagan notes, companies that have successfully transitioned from feature teams to empowered product teams include Netflix, Amazon, and Spotify – all organisations that understood the fundamental shift from measuring output to measuring outcomes and team empowerment. But team empowerment doesn’t necessarily mean applying a framework and letting them get on with it – it means making that empowerment drive intrinsic value by ensuring that the individuals within the teams or squads have inner motivation, feel safe to innovate, challenge or explore.
The Path Forward
The transition from feature factory to people factory requires intentional culture change. Start by reframing product discussions: instead of “What features do we need?” ask “What human problems are we solving, and how do our team dynamics enable or inhibit our ability to solve them well?”. Your teams shouldn’t be seen as features that you deliver but just as we’ve moved from features to outcomes in user needs apply the same vibe to your people. Listen, feedback and try again.
Product leadership in 2025 demands a fundamental shift in perspective. We’re not just building software – we’re cultivating human potential to solve meaningful problems for other humans. The organisations that embrace this reality will create products that don’t just function well, but genuinely improve human experience.