"A roadmap is not a feature list. It's a sequence of bets on how to create value."

product-strategy

product-discovery

product-delivery

ai-native-product

product-leadership

• Organizing your product into capability blocks
• Converting discovery opportunities into prioritized bets
• Building or updating your roadmap
• Writing solution briefs before engineering commits
• Preparing for planning cycles (quarterly, annually)
• Communicating product direction to stakeholders

1. Feature lists masquerading as roadmaps
2. No clear connection between strategy and what gets built
3. Solution briefs that are either too vague or too prescriptive
4. Backlogs organized by urgency, not impact

1. Bets over features — We're not building features, we're placing bets on outcomes
2. Roadmaps show direction, not dates — Commitments are for sprints, not quarters
3. Problems before solutions — Every bet must connect to a validated opportunity
4. Solution briefs over PRDs — Just enough spec to start, emergent detail through building
5. Blocks organize complexity — Group capabilities by customer value, not technical architecture

• Feature factories (build what's requested, not what matters)
• Date-driven roadmaps (false precision creates false expectations)
• Disconnected backlogs (no traceability to strategy)
• Waterfall PRDs (200-page specs nobody reads)
• Tech-driven architecture (organizing by system, not customer)

• "Onboarding" (helps users get started)
• "Reporting" (helps users understand performance)
• "Collaboration" (helps teams work together)
• "Integrations" (connects to existing workflows)

• "Backend services"
• "API layer"
• "Database module"

BLOCK: Reporting
├── Feature: Dashboard builder
├── Feature: Scheduled reports
├── Feature: Export to PDF
└── Feature: Custom metrics

BET: [Name]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Hypothesis: We believe that [action] will result in [outcome]
Target metric: [Metric] from [baseline] to [target]
Timebox: [Duration]
Block: [Which block this belongs to]
Opportunity: [Link to validated opportunity in OST]
Kill criteria: [When we stop]
Scale criteria: [When we double down]
Effort: [T-shirt size]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

• Every bet traces to a validated opportunity
• Maximum 3 P0 bets at any time
• Bets without kill criteria don't make the backlog
• Review and reprioritize quarterly (or when evidence changes)

A roadmap is a communication tool, not a contract. It shows direction and priorities, not delivery dates.

NOW (Current quarter - high confidence)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
• [Bet A] — [Brief description]
• [Bet B] — [Brief description]

NEXT (Next quarter - medium confidence)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
• [Bet C] — [Brief description]
• [Bet D] — [Brief description]

LATER (Future - low confidence, subject to change)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
• [Bet E] — [Brief description]
• [Bet F] — [Brief description]

SOLUTION BRIEF: [Name]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

CONTEXT
• Bet: [Link to bet]
• Opportunity: [Link to validated opportunity]
• Block: [Which block]

THE PROBLEM
[2-3 sentences on what problem we're solving and for whom]

CUSTOMER QUOTE
"[Actual quote from discovery]"

SUCCESS METRICS
• Primary: [Metric] from [baseline] to [target]
• Secondary: [Metric]
• Guardrail: [What we won't let degrade]

SOLUTION APPROACH
[High-level description of approach — NOT detailed specs]

KEY DECISIONS MADE
• [Decision 1]: [Rationale]
• [Decision 2]: [Rationale]

OPEN QUESTIONS
• [Question 1]
• [Question 2]

CONSTRAINTS
• Must: [Non-negotiable requirements]
• Must not: [Explicit exclusions]
• Timeline: [If relevant]

ASSUMPTIONS TO VALIDATE
• [Assumption 1]
• [Assumption 2]

OUT OF SCOPE
• [What we're explicitly NOT doing]
• [What we're explicitly NOT doing]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

• Detailed UI specs (emerge through design process)
• Technical implementation details (engineering decides)
• Project timelines (delivery system handles)
• Edge cases (discover through building)

templates/

• block-portfolio.md

  — Block inventory and health tracking

• bet-backlog.md

  — Bet format and prioritization

• roadmap.md

  — Now/Next/Later and quarterly themes

• solution-brief.md

  — Lightweight spec template

1. Design block structure: "Help me organize [product] into capability blocks"
2. Convert opportunity to bet: "Turn this opportunity into a bet with hypothesis and metrics"
3. Prioritize bets: "Help me prioritize these bets using [framework]"
4. Create roadmap: "Build a Now/Next/Later roadmap from these bets"
5. Review roadmap: "Critique this roadmap for common anti-patterns"
6. Write solution brief: "Create a solution brief for [bet]"
7. Scope solution: "What should be in vs. out of scope for [bet]?"
8. Define success metrics: "What metrics should we track for [bet]?"
9. Plan quarterly themes: "Help me define themes for the next 4 quarters"
10. Balance portfolio: "Is my bet portfolio balanced? What's missing?"

• Every bet traces to opportunity — No orphan features
• Kill criteria defined — Know when to stop
• Portfolio is balanced — 70/20/10 or similar
• Roadmap shows trade-offs — What we're NOT doing is clear
• Solution briefs exist — For all "Now" bets
• Metrics are measurable — Can actually track success
• Team has capacity — Bets fit within available resources
• Dependencies mapped — Know what blocks what

• Marty Cagan — INSPIRED, EMPOWERED
• Ryan Singer — Shape Up (Basecamp)
• Teresa Torres — Continuous Discovery Habits
• Gibson Biddle — Product strategy frameworks