Surviving the Feature Factory: A PM’s Guide

“I’m in a feature factory. It sucks and I want to quit.”

Hold on for a minute.

You should probably know that this is the fate of many a PM. You’re not alone.
And many have parlayed the experience into promotions and better jobs down the line.

Here’s how they do it:

To learn more, check out the deep-dive.

1. Surrender to the Factory

• At first: instead of trying to transform, accept your fate
• Recognise that the empowered world has problems too
• The exception is GPM+, in which case you should drive transformation long-term

2. Adapt to your Environment

• Triple-click into what your real job is, not the one in newsletters & blogs
• Figure out what your stakeholders & colleagues actually value
• Then overdeliver quality on the tasks that your job cares about

3. Create a Promotion Path

• Get 1:1s with people who were promoted recently
• Do a ‘discovery call’ and understand the 5 whys behind their promotion
• Figure out the patterns at your company, then plan your journey accordingly

4. Uplevel Isolated Practices

• Once you have credibility and success as a feature factory PM then,
• Prioritize isolated practices that will also help you as a feature factory PM
• Adapt these practices incrementally to prove out their value

5. Build Your Coalition

• Make the lives of your design & engineering teammates easier
• Build an alliance that’s finding better ways to work
• Find happiness in doing good work together, even if the situation is not ideal

6. Learn to Love It

• As you succeed and have good people to work with, relish it
• While you can always find a better place to work; you’re getting valuable execution experience for now
• This is a transferrable skill

You don’t have to stay miserable.