Roadmaps as Bets, Not Promises
Good roadmaps state the bet, the evidence, and the kill criteria. If new evidence arrives and nothing changes, you don’t have a roadmap; you have a schedule.
If a component is on the right side of a Wardley map (product/commodity), default to buy unless it’s a differentiator or a constraint. If it’s left (genesis/custom), default to build if it underpins your unique value. Revisit quarterly.
Start with three lists: – Users (who) – User needs (what) – Components (to meet those needs) Place components along evolution (Genesis → Custom → Product → Commodity) and position them by visibility (user-facing vs. back-end). The point is to see where to build vs. buy, and to avoid reinventing commodities. Mapping turns vague strategy…
This is scaffolding, not theater: definitions that don’t wobble, datasets you can trust, and views that help leaders change decisions, not request more slides. I connect event‑level signals to outcomes like effort, adoption, expansion, and risk. Then I kill anything that doesn’t move a decision. “When two leaders see different numbers for the same question,…
Treating product‑market fit like a light switch leads to two failures: forcing growth into a hollow core or missing the window to scale. I break PMF into three questions: 1) Can we repeatedly reach the right users? 2) Do they convert for the reason we think? 3) Does value compound enough to keep them? Evidence…