Your CEO wants dates on the roadmap, and arguing about uncertainty is losing
Convert each item into an outcome, sort it into Now, Next, and Later, then answer the timing question with measured cycle time instead of a guess.
Arguments over the product roadmap are the most common source of tension between technology leaders and the rest of the leadership team. The engineering answer is usually some version of it is uncertain and it is a team sport. Rich Mironov, author of The Art of Product Management, is blunt about why that fails: those things are true, and a CEO who did not come up through engineering hears every one of them as an excuse or as incompetence.
The CEO is not being unreasonable. They need data to make investment decisions, and they can measure every other function in the building. What they are asking for is a basis for confidence. A date is just the only form they have been offered.
So offer a different one. Put outcomes on the roadmap instead of features, use loose timeframes instead of dates, and get your timing answer from measured cycle time rather than from a number somebody committed to under pressure. This worksheet does the conversion.
What you get
- A conversion table for restating each dated item as an outcome, with how you would know it happened
- A Now, Next, Later sorting grid
- Three checks to run before you present it, including the one about whether you have a real cycle time to offer
Where should we send it?
One email with the worksheet. You can unsubscribe from anything else in one click.
On its way
Check your inbox. If it has not landed in a minute or two, look in promotions or spam, and add sam@startuppatterns.com to your contacts so the rest arrive.
Adapted from the Delivery chapter of The Mindful Product Company by Sam McAfee.