3 Roadmap Prioritization Mistakes That Kill Products

Building a roadmap is easy. Building the RIGHT roadmap is hard. Here are the most common mistakes and how to avoid them.

Mistake #1: The HiPPO Effect

The Highest Paid Person’s Opinion shouldn’t drive your roadmap. Yet in many organizations, it does.

How to fix it: Establish clear prioritization criteria upfront. Use frameworks like RICE or Value vs Effort that make trade-offs explicit.

Mistake #2: Feature Factory Mentality

Shipping features isn’t the goal. Solving customer problems is.

How to fix it: Shift from output metrics (features shipped) to outcome metrics (customer value delivered).

Mistake #3: Ignoring Technical Debt

That “quick fix” you did 6 months ago? It’s now blocking your most important feature.

How to fix it: Reserve 20-30% of engineering capacity for tech debt and platform work.