As a software engineer you should be no stranger to the word feature. You may be part of a feature team working on a user feature in your feature branch implementing a feature toggle, wondering what went wrong in the feature prioritization meeting that lead to this feature creep.

Features aren’t bad and they are in fact the primary way for a product to deliver value and benefits to the user. But features shouldn’t be the only lens you use when developing your product. By shifting your approach from delivering features to developing capabilities, you’ll be able to unlock a lot more from your sprints.

So what is a capability? I consider capability as the fundamental building blocks that makes up a feature. A feature may require a few different capabilities from your product to function. The same set of capabilities could also be packaged as different features to different users.