If you’ve worked in product long enough, you’ve seen the trap: teams equating shipping features with delivering value. Tickets close, PRs merge, roadmaps slide left to right. And yet customers churn, usage flatlines, revenue stalls.
Melissa Perri’s Escaping the Build Trap names this disease perfectly. The book isn’t about building faster, it’s about building smarter: moving from outputs to outcomes. Let’s break it down.
Features ≠ Value
The uncomfortable truth: most features don’t matter.
- Output: we built it.
- Outcome: it changed behavior.
- Impact: it tied to company strategy.
Too many orgs stop at output. That’s the trap.
Here’s the simple framing:
| Mode | Measurement | Typical Failure Mode |
|---|---|---|
| Output-focused | Features shipped, story points burned | Roadmap bloat, vanity velocity |
| Outcome-focused | Customer behavior change (retention, adoption, revenue) | Requires instrumentation, exec patience |
| Impact-focused | Direct contribution to strategy | Needs strong alignment and leadership |
Product vs Project Thinking
Project success = “we shipped on time and on budget.” Product success = “we solved the right problem and it moved the needle.”
So why does project thinking dominate? Because execs like tidy spreadsheets. Product thinking is messy: hypotheses, experiments, bad news when bets fail.
But if you’re running “projects,” you’re managing delivery. If you’re running “products,” you’re managing outcomes. Big difference.
Strategy Isn’t a Roadmap
Perri is ruthless here: a roadmap is not a strategy. Strategy is a chain of decisions.
Here’s the missing link most orgs skip:
flowchart TD
A[Company Mission] --> B[Product Vision]
B --> C[Strategic Intents]
C --> D[Initiatives]
D --> E[Experiments]
E --> F[Features]What most companies do instead:
flowchart TD
A[Company Mission] --> F[Roadmap Features]See the problem? No connective tissue. No “why.” Just a list.
Leadership’s Real Job
Executives say they want “innovation.” Then they hand down feature lists like commandments. That’s not leadership: that’s micromanagement.
The right role of leadership:
- Set outcomes (“reduce churn by 10%”).
- Give teams autonomy to test outputs (features, experiments) that drive it.
- Kill roadmaps-as-security-blankets.
But this requires trust. Most execs don’t have it. So they cling to deadlines and lists. And morale dies.
Metrics or It Didn’t Happen
“If we don’t understand something, we simply don’t have enough instrumentation.”
That line might as well be tattooed on the cover. The build trap thrives where metrics are weak.
Bad metrics:
- Story points completed.
- Number of deploys.
Good metrics:
- % of customers adopting new workflow.
- NPS shift after feature launch.
- Churn reduction by cohort.
| Metric Type | Bad Example | Good Example |
|---|---|---|
| Activity | # of Jira tickets closed | % of customers adopting feature |
| Speed | Velocity (points/week) | Lead time from idea → measurable impact |
| Output | Feature count | Retention, revenue, churn |
Measure what matters, or don’t bother building.
Escaping the Trap
The playbook isn’t rocket science:
graph TD
A[Define Vision & Strategy]
A --> B[Set Outcomes not Outputs]
B --> C[Empower Product Teams]
C --> D[Instrument & Experiment]
D --> E[Kill Roadmap Obsession]
E --> F[Continuous Feedback Loops]Hard to do? Yes. Worth it? Absolutely.
Trapped vs Escaped
Let’s make this stark:
| Behavior | Build Trap | Escaped |
|---|---|---|
| Backlog | Feature wish-list | Hypotheses tied to outcomes |
| Success | ”Shipped on time" | "Customer behavior changed” |
| Roadmap | List of features | Strategic bets + experiments |
| Metrics | Velocity, ticket count | Retention, adoption, churn |
| Exec Role | Mandate features | Set direction, measure outcomes |
My Take
The build trap is seductive because shipping feels like progress. But unless you can tie features to outcomes, you’re just burning cash.
I’ve been there: shipping six “must-have” features in a sprint, demoing them proudly, and watching usage crater. I’ve also been on the other side: painfully killing features, setting up proper metrics, grinding through experiments until we actually moved retention.
The second path is harder. It’s slower. It’s uncomfortable. But it’s the only one that compounds.
So if your backlog looks like a graveyard of “CEO asks” instead of experiments tied to strategy, you’re not building product. You’re trapped. The good news? Awareness is the first step out.