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.
Odyslav Bozhenko
Senior Product Manager at Vend Marketplaces, Mobility Pro. Writing about discovery, strategy, and the craft of shipping great products.
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