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by Jeremy Voorhis.
Original Post: Feature Ecology
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Throughout my years as a software developer, I have come to recognize that it is silly to think a product can be improved by adding features. A product is its features. More specifically, it is the union of its features within a given context. When a feature is added to a product, the nature of that product has changed. Can you imagine a product with no features? I doubt it. Can you describe a product without mentioning any of its features? Can you compare two products while ignoring their features? Try it.
Features are not additive; they alter the environment of all other features. I recall when 37signals added Writeboards to Basecamp. When posting to Basecamp, I decided whether I was posting a living document which would be best handled by Writeboard, or a temporal message, which was best handled by the messages feature of Basecamp. Messages also excelled at fostering discussion, but Writeboards did not; they were more wiki-like, and over time the identity of the original author matters less and less. Later, 37s integrated Campfire with Basecamp. Since then, Basecamp users who want to initiate a discussion can use the cooler messages option or the warmer Campfire group chat.
After these two features were added to Basecamp, its messages weren’t used in quite the same way. If you are reading this blog, it is very likely you are participating in creating a product of some sort. Do you have compartmentalized ideas of a product and its feature list? Do you implement features in isolation, or can you find the interactions between features within your product’s environment?
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