Three priorities, not twelve
The roadmap is not the strategy. The strategy is what you are willing to stop doing so three things can be done well.
Every product team I meet has a roadmap. Very few have a strategy. The roadmap says what will be built. The strategy says why those things and not the others, and it survives contact with a bad quarter. If your roadmap has twelve priorities, you have none.
A useful test
Read the top of your roadmap to someone outside the team. If they cannot tell you what the product is trying to become, the roadmap is a list of requests wearing a strategy’s clothes.
Writing it down
A strategy that lives in a leader’s head is a rumour. Write one page. The bet you are making. The three things that matter most this year. The things you are explicitly not doing, and why. Then put it where the team will see it every week.
- The bet. One sentence about who you serve and what changes for them.
- Three priorities. Outcomes, not features. Each with an owner.
- The not list. The good ideas you are declining. This is the part that makes the rest credible.
Decisions in writing
Strategy decays through small decisions that nobody records. End every significant meeting with what was decided, why, and who owns it. Over a quarter, those notes become the real strategy, and you can check whether it matches the one on the page.
Three things done well beat twelve started.