What is the Next Feature Fallacy?

The Next Feature Fallacy is the belief that the next feature will fix growth. In this episode of Datadrivet, Joni Lindgren and Jasmin Yaya explain the fallacy and how a focus on shipping sabotages a product organisation.

Teams working agile are measured on how fast they build. They are often not building the right things. Most companies the hosts have worked with do not know their 1 Day, 7 Day, and 30 Day retention.

The industry defaults to tracking story points and burndown. The KPIs that show whether a team builds the right things go unmeasured. Optimise for shipping features fast and you stop optimising for learning fast.

The hosts argue agile was not designed around user needs, while lean was.

Sunk cost makes teams ship an underperforming feature. People also overweight their own ideas, so A/B testing helps. It checks the idea against real behaviour.

For a social platform, a meaningful goal is daily active users coming back. The episode notes point to Andrew Chen’s article on the concept.

The fix is cultural and needs leadership behind it.

• Prioritise learning from the top.
• Measure results against business goals instead of feature count.
• Study how users behave in their first 7 days before planning the next sprint.
• Put A/B testing in place before building the next thing.

Listen to the full episode of Datadrivet.