| name | product-roadmap |
| description | Create or audit an outcome-based product roadmap that connects strategy to sequenced bets, evidence checkpoints, dependencies, and adaptation rules. Use when a roadmap is a feature calendar, stakeholders demand dates without uncertainty, or a team needs Now/Next/Later planning. |
Product Roadmap
Represent a sequence of strategic bets and learning commitments, not a promise to ship a fixed list of features.
Inputs
- Strategy, outcomes, and non-goals
- Current evidence and key uncertainties
- Candidate bets and dependencies
- Capacity, obligations, time-sensitive constraints, and planning horizon
- Stakeholder decision cadence
Workflow
- State the strategic outcome and roadmap horizon.
- Group work into outcome-oriented initiatives with target customer, problem, mechanism, and measure.
- Separate committed obligations from discovery bets and optional solutions.
- Sequence by dependency, risk reduction, time criticality, and learning value.
- Use Now/Next/Later or explicit horizons; assign precise dates only where evidence and dependencies support them.
- Add an evidence checkpoint and continuation rule to each initiative.
- Show capacity allocation, reliability work, and contingency rather than planning at 100 percent utilization.
- Record excluded work and conditions that would change the plan.
- Define the review cadence and decision owner.
Output contract
Return strategic outcome, horizon lanes, initiative cards, measures, evidence checkpoints, dependencies, capacity notes, commitments versus options, non-goals, confidence, and review rules.
Quality gate
- Initiatives describe outcomes and assumptions rather than solution scope alone.
- Dates communicate confidence and commitment type.
- Discovery can change delivery scope.
- Dependencies and capacity are visible.
- The roadmap can adapt without pretending the strategy changed.
Avoid
- Feature lists with quarters attached
- Equal certainty across all horizons
- Hiding compliance, reliability, or platform work
- Using “agile” to avoid commitments or using dates to deny uncertainty
- Maintaining roadmap items without a review trigger
Source grounding
Operational synthesis informed by the outcome-over-output model in Escaping the Build Trap, product discovery and delivery distinctions in Inspired, and strategy coherence in Good Strategy/Bad Strategy.
