Escaping the Build Trap

About

Background summary — AI-generated; not source-grounded.

Escaping the Build Trap (2018) by Melissa Perri diagnoses and prescribes treatment for a failure mode she observed repeatedly in product organisations: companies that measure success by shipping features rather than by customer outcomes. The ‘build trap’ is the state of building and building without knowing whether the output is creating value — treating output as a proxy for progress. Perri argues that escaping it requires a shift from a project-centric mindset (deliver scope on schedule) to an outcome-centric one (achieve a measurable change in customer behaviour). The book covers product strategy, the product manager role, team structure, and the organisational conditions required to do product work well.

In the wiki

Melissa Perri cited her own work in Melissa Perri on Strategy Deployment, the Missing Middle, and When to Hire a CPO, where she describes the strategic deployment problems that follow from the build trap — specifically the Missing Middle between executive strategy and team execution.