A backlog of two hundred items
Nothing has been closed in a year because nothing has been decided. Grouping by underlying problem usually collapses it to a manageable number.
Product Management
A roadmap that lists everything anyone asked for is a list, not a plan. Product work is deciding what comes next, writing down the reason, and being willing to defend it when the loudest customer asks about their feature.
The work starts with talking to the people who use the thing, which is where the difference between what customers request and what they need shows up. Requests arrive as solutions. The job is finding the problem behind them, because one problem often sits under five requests.
Then it is scope. Most features can ship at a third of the size and still settle the question they were meant to answer, and shipping the third teaches you whether the rest is worth building.
// what you get
What's included.
- Customer and user interviews, with the findings written up rather than remembered
- A prioritized roadmap with the reasoning recorded next to each decision
- Specifications a developer can build from and a stakeholder can recognize
- Scope work: the smallest version that answers the question the feature was asked to answer
- Success measures agreed before the build, and checked after
- Release planning and the communication that goes with it
// where it fits
The situations this is usually bought for.
Features shipped and never used
Built because a customer asked, released without a measure, forgotten. Agreeing the measure first changes what gets built.
A founder who is the only product decision-maker
Fine at five people, a bottleneck at twenty. The work is making the decision criteria explicit enough that others can apply them.
// built
Where this shows up in our own work.
SaaS productboardwing.com
Boardwing
Board meeting software: drag-and-drop agendas, one-click meeting packets, and an AI copilot for the busywork, so boards can focus on the decisions.
Marketplace appaltura-talent.com
Altura
A map-based marketplace where creators and small businesses show their work, sell, and get booked by people nearby. Built as an installable web app, so there is no app store between someone hearing about it and using it.
Early access. Accounts and the feed run on live data; the public launch hasn't happened yet.
// usually bought with
- UX DesignInterfaces people can use without being taught, checked against a written framework.
- Software Engineering ManagementFractional engineering leadership for a team that has grown past improvising.
- Application DevelopmentWeb applications with real users, accounts, permissions, and something to sell.
// say hello
Tell us what you are trying to fix.
Discovery calls are free and usually last 30 minutes. We listen first, and we will tell you honestly if product management is the wrong thing to spend money on.
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