The term feature factory has become so common in product management discourse that it risks losing its sting. But for the teams living inside one, the experience is anything but abstract. It means shipping features that nobody uses, building to specifications written by people who never talk to customers, and measuring success by output velocity rather than customer impact.
At PR_D_CT DAY 2023, Saskia Deschepper and Inge Logghe from Liantis told the story of their company's transformation from a feature factory to a problem-focused product organisation. Liantis, a major Belgian social secretariat serving entrepreneurs and SMEs, had all the hallmarks of a feature factory: long requirements documents, a roadmap driven by internal stakeholders rather than customer needs, and a marketing team that was asked to promote features after they were built rather than involved in understanding customer problems upfront.
What made this talk particularly compelling was the dual perspective. Saskia spoke from the product side and Inge from marketing, showing how the transformation required both functions to change fundamentally, and how the collaboration between them became the engine of the transformation.
