Your product shouldn't be a swiss army knife

Swiss army knives. They can be super helpful in really specific situations - say your camping or traveling and your light on space and need a tool that can help you in multiple different ways.

Unfortunately for the multifunctional tool, for the majority of the time, there is often a better alternative - a tool that has been created to specifically solve your problem, or hired to help you with your job.

There is a saying I've heard a few times in business - "If everything is a priority, nothing is a priority". There are parallels to product management from here.

If companies believe that more features = more success, I bet you there is a competitor out there that offers fewer features but solves the problem better than you. There is also UX consideration within this - Hick's Law of UX states that the more options you present to a user, the longer it will take for them to make a decision. Less is often more.

If you have laser focus on what your product or business should do, with a clear strategy, and validated that it solves problems customers are experiencing, you're on the right track.

New features not only present an opportunity cost, but also maintenance, training, comms, co-ordination, support, documentation and tech debt cost to name a few (I'll go into this in a future post). Focus on what you can do better rather than just copying the competition. Optimise and iterate around your core proposition before turning to new features.