Marty Cagan Transformed Quotes

Realize that if the company was set up with feature teams, then it is very unlikely that there was any unifying vision at play—as feature teams are all about serving the needs of their particular stakeholders.

So, why do so few of these features actually generate the hoped-for return? Realize that each of these features is a potential solution to some underlying problem. It might be a customer problem—maybe customers can't figure out how to use your product effectively. Or it might be a company problem—maybe it costs too much for you to provision your product.

If you compare the list of capabilities that your company needs with the impact that your newly released capabilities are generating, and if you are not feeling good about the return, then this is why changing how you solve problems is so important. The root of the issue is that these feature teams are set up to serve the stakeholders in your business, rather than to serve your customers in ways that work for your business.

Why is that? Because once the product manager has claimed something is a “requirement,” that pretty much ends the conversation and moves the discussion to implementation.

In stakeholder-driven models, it is inherently nearly impossible to have this necessary focus. That's because each stakeholder has their own goals and needs, and the company is simply trying to satisfy as many stakeholders as possible.