dragoon0x roadmap-planning
a roadmap is a record of bets, not a list of features.
what a roadmap is for
- align a team on direction without locking dates
- communicate priorities to people outside the team
- create a vocabulary for tradeoffs ("we're not doing X because we're doing Y this quarter")
- expose dependencies and bets explicitly
what a roadmap is not for
- predicting ship dates with precision
- listing every task
- making people outside the team comfortable that everything will be done
structure
theme
a theme is a bet about where to focus. "improve onboarding". "deepen the analytics layer". "ship for teams".
themes have a duration (usually a quarter). themes have a question they answer ("can we get day-7 retention above 40%?") and an investment level ("most of our eng capacity").
within each theme, three buckets
- now: committed work, in progress or starting
- next: high confidence, queued behind now
- later: under consideration, may or may not happen
later is not a backlog. it's the set of bets we'd make if next doesn't pan out or capacity opens up.
sequencing rules
- highest-risk bets early. if a bet kills the theme, you want to learn that fast.
- dependencies before dependents.
- learning before scaling. ship the smallest version that teaches you something.
what to capture per item
title: [short name]
theme: [which theme this belongs to]
hypothesis: [what we believe will happen if we ship this]
size: [t-shirt: xs, s, m, l, xl]
confidence: [low / medium / high]
status: [now / next / later]
dependencies: [other items or external factors]
metric: [what we'd measure to know it worked]
what to avoid
- roadmaps that list features without themes (no shape)
- roadmaps with everything in "now" (no priorities)
- dates that imply more precision than you have
- a roadmap that hasn't changed in months (means you stopped learning)
- a roadmap that changes weekly (means you don't have themes)
review cadence
- weekly: status on
now, surface blockers - monthly: re-evaluate confidence on
next - quarterly: pick themes for the next quarter, demote and promote between buckets
how to tell it's working
- people outside the team can answer "what is the product team focused on right now?"
- people inside the team can say no to good ideas by pointing at the roadmap
- you can point at last quarter's roadmap and explain what shipped, what didn't, and what you learned