Transcript: Shuki Aharonovich | Tachles: What's the Difference Between a Feature Factory and an Empowered PM?

Host: Eyal David · Guest: Shuki Aharonovich · Back to episode

July 25, 2025 · Updated: October 21, 2026

A short clip from the full conversation with Shuki Aharonovich, Group Product Manager at Augury. Shuki describes the frustration of product management as a "work contractor" executing rows in a projects spreadsheet without understanding why, and the moment, on a walk in Yarkon Park, when Marty Cagan's book gave him the vocabulary for how he wanted to work: initiating, solving real problems of real customers, and rallying a team that's all here to build.

In this episode

In a feature factory the PM is a work contractor: a committee sets the roadmap, the PM gets cell 13 in the spreadsheet, implements it, never looks back and moves on to row 14.
The cost of working this way is that you don't always understand why you're building what you're building, so it's hard to get the team to follow you.
An empowered PM gets up in the morning, talks to customers, identifies problems, and builds the roadmap and solutions with the team: more initiative, more ownership, more closeness to the customer and the problem.
Instead of endless clashes between the R&D guild and the product guild, the goal is a feeling that everyone is here to build together.
Marty Cagan's book gave Shuki the vocabulary to describe how he wanted to work: to have an impact, to initiate and to solve real problems of real customers.

The PM as a work contractor: cell 13 in the spreadsheet

Eyal David: [00:00] So, Takhles: what's the difference between a feature factory and an Empowered PM? Here's a short clip from the full episode with Shuki.

Shuki Aharonovich: [00:09] But it's really, really what I did want to do, it's what I dreamed of, when I...

Eyal David: [00:09] So describe the difference for us.

Shuki Aharonovich: [00:09] So back then I didn't have the good terminology yet, and only later, when I read Marty Cagan, did I suddenly have that missing piece, that conceptualization. But basically I wanted to be a product manager who gets up in the morning and talks to customers and identifies problems and builds a roadmap and builds solutions together with his team. More initiating, really, more initiating, more ownership, more closeness to the customer and to the problem. And yes, what I felt back then, both at Pioneer and at other companies I worked at, was that product management was, was kind of a work contractor. You, there's some committee that decides what gets done and what the roadmap is and what, and which projects get done. And you show up as a product manager and you get cell number 13 in the projects Excel, and you go and you implement it and you build it, and then you finish it and you never look back at it, and you go and move on to row number 14 in the projects Excel. And that's a really frustrating feeling, because you don't always understand why you're building what you're building, and it's also hard for you to get the team to follow you. Maybe you shouldn't be doing this project, maybe this isn't the right way to do this project, it doesn't matter.

Marty Cagan and tears in Yarkon Park

Eyal David: [01:20] That also really goes against who you are.

Shuki Aharonovich: [01:20] Right, right, totally, totally. And then I started a process, following Gil Hirsch's podcast, of listening and researching, podcasts and books, and then also listening to Marty Cagan's book. I was walking in Yarkon Park, listening to Marty Cagan's book, and tears started running from my eyes, because he described so well the feelings I had about how I was working at the time, and he gave me the vocabulary to talk about how I want to work. About the fact that I, like you say, I want to have an impact, I want to initiate, I want to solve real problems of real customers. I want to get a team to follow me, I want to feel that we're all here building, and not that there's the R&D guild and the product guild and they're in these endless clashes, like, like R&D don't want to be here, they're kind of angry at you for bringing some feature. No, you're here to build, I'm here to build, follow me. All of us together.

Eyal David: [02:05] Yes. That was a Takhles episode from Product Builder. Want to hear the full conversation? Look for it in the feed, and don't forget to follow us.