My pet theory is that every software product has a "peak version". Before that peak version, the product is not yet in a complete state, and it is fairly obvious, both for the developer and user, what features are missing. Once the peak version is reached, new features are not added because they improve the product, but to justify selling the product again to existing customers, and to 'keep the team busy'.
Instead of really improving the product, features become checkboxes on the roadmap. Which eventually results in degrading the quality of the product, it becomes bloated, the UX becomes confusing (especially to new users), and existing features start to suffer because the "maintenance surface" becomes bigger and bigger.
What should happen of course is that the product's feature set is frozen at the "peak version", and only bug fixes and optimizations are happening, that's a hard sell to the bean counters of course, especially with subscription models and "software as a service" which they like so much. From the customer's point of view, bug fixes and optimizations are expected to come for free, because they are fixing defects in the original product and don't add any value, right?
Eventually progress and success is measured in features added, not in satisfaction of individual customers. And as long as KPIs are looking alright - meaning the 'average customer' (which doesn't exist btw) isn't pissed off enough to look elsewhere, all is good, even though everything is terrible.
Instead of really improving the product, features become checkboxes on the roadmap. Which eventually results in degrading the quality of the product, it becomes bloated, the UX becomes confusing (especially to new users), and existing features start to suffer because the "maintenance surface" becomes bigger and bigger.
What should happen of course is that the product's feature set is frozen at the "peak version", and only bug fixes and optimizations are happening, that's a hard sell to the bean counters of course, especially with subscription models and "software as a service" which they like so much. From the customer's point of view, bug fixes and optimizations are expected to come for free, because they are fixing defects in the original product and don't add any value, right?
Eventually progress and success is measured in features added, not in satisfaction of individual customers. And as long as KPIs are looking alright - meaning the 'average customer' (which doesn't exist btw) isn't pissed off enough to look elsewhere, all is good, even though everything is terrible.