The Feature Nobody Asked For
When you have a feature, thats the highest priority, but they wanted it 12 months ago!
Was thinking today about roadmaps, and answering some questions on the topic.
Quite awhile ago, I was working on a feature, that Senior Product Management leadership said it was needed. Marketing and Sales referenced it, and there was a push for releasing it at RSAC. I was being told, customers were buzzing, and asking for it!
So decided to build it.
We spent weeks on it on a major push for RSAC. We went through some serious stress internally on the team getting it done and pushed through. We shipped it in time for RSAC, and I felt it was a miracle crossing my fingers it actually worked.
A few weeks after RSAC, no customer had used it.
Why? I think by the time we had gotten around to implementing it, the customer had stopped caring. There was a real demand, but we spent too long executing, and by the time we were ready, the customer had already moved on.
The lesson? Feature requests have an expiration date and a best before date. The most dangerous thing on a product roadmap is not a bad idea, its an expired one.