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Strategy vs. Roadmap: A PM's Guide
02/02/2026 Most PMs think a roadmap is their strategy. It isn't. If you've ever felt like you're just managing a Tetris board of feature r...
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When to Shut Up in Meetings
02/02/2026 You're in sprint planning. Engineering just said "that's a lot for one sprint." You can feel the room tense up. Here...
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Stop Using RICE. Try the "Triple Lens" Instead.
21/12/2025 Most Product Managers prioritize using fake math. We've all been there. You're in a room, arguing with stakeholders about whether ...
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The Hidden Cost of "Maybe Later"
21/12/2025 Everyone talks about technical debt. Nobody talks about roadmap debt. You know the scenario. A stakeholder asks for a feature. It’s not a...
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The 3 Unspoken Laws of PM Communication
21/12/2025 Most people think "good communication" means having charisma or building beautiful slide decks. It doesn't. In Product Manag...
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The "Janitor" Mindset: Why Execution is Mostly Just Unblocking
21/12/2025 Everyone loves talking about Strategy. But you live in Execution. Most PMs think execution is just "project management"—moving ti...
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Discovery 101: Stop Guessing, Start Validating
21/12/2025 Most product teams treat "Discovery" as a checkbox phase that happens before the "real work" of coding begins. You do so...
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Signal vs. Noise: The Art of Ruthless Focus
21/12/2025 Kevin O'Leary recently shared a story about Elon Musk that stopped me in my tracks. Apparently, if you’re talking to Musk and you’re not...
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Roadmap Debt: The Hidden Cost of Promises You Can't Keep
09/12/2025 Everyone obsessively tracks technical debt. Engineers have sophisticated arguments for refactoring, and we bake 20% time into sprints to pay...
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Dual-Track Roadmapping: The Discovery/Delivery Split That Changes Everything
09/12/2025 Traditional roadmaps only show delivery: what you're building and when. But delivery is the end of the product process, not the beginni...
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Theme-Based Roadmaps: How to Unite Your Team Around Outcomes
09/12/2025 Most product roadmaps look like a restaurant menu. You promise an appetizer in Q1, an entrée in Q2, and dessert in Q3. It feels organized....
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The Now-Next-Later Roadmap: Why Timelines Are Killing Your Strategy
09/12/2025 Most roadmaps are lies. We organize them by quarters (Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4) to make stakeholders feel comfortable, but we create a trap for oursel...
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Stop Writing User Stories. Start Writing Job Stories.
09/12/2025 Most "User Stories" I see in Jira aren't stories at all. They're just features wrapped in a template. You know the drill...
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Discovery vs Delivery: Why PMs Spend Too Much Time on the Wrong One
09/12/2025 Most Product Managers' calendars look like a game of Tetris made entirely of Jira tickets. We spend our days refining backlogs, sitting ...
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The Stakeholder Management Matrix Nobody Teaches You
09/12/2025 The classic Power vs. Interest grid is neat, tidy, and completely useless in a crisis. In the real world, a "low power" Sales Re...
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Why Most Product Roadmaps Fail (And the One Question That Fixes Them)
09/12/2025 Most product roadmaps are lies. You know the kind I mean. They look like colorful Gantt charts. They have specific dates for features six ...
Strategy vs. Roadmap: A PM's Guide
Most PMs think a roadmap is their strategy. It isn't. If you've ever felt like you're just managing a Tetris board of feature requests, you’re likely confusing your destination with the steps you're taking to get there.
The Difference (And Why It Matters)
Most PMs do Roadmapping. They focus on the "What" and the "When." It's a list of features, a timeline, and a series of ship dates. It's essentially a delivery schedule disguised as a plan.
Better PMs do Strategy first. They focus on the "Why" and the "How we win." Strategy is a set of choices about how you will overcome a specific challenge or capture a specific opportunity. It’s the logic that justifies the items on the roadmap.
Strategy is the engine; the roadmap is just the dashboard showing where the car is headed today.
Why the Strategy-First Approach Works Better
When you lead with strategy, your conversations with stakeholders change. Instead of arguing about whether "Feature A" should be in Q3 or Q4, you're aligned on the problem you're trying to solve.
- Saying "No" becomes easier: You aren't being mean; you're just pointing out that the request doesn't align with the current strategic pillar.
- Autonomy for the team: If the team understands the strategy (the outcome), they can pivot the roadmap (the output) when they discover a better way to achieve the goal.
- Avoids Roadmap Debt: You stop committing to "maybe" features six months in advance just to fill a slide.
When a Roadmap-First Approach Fails
If you have a roadmap without a strategy, you're running a feature factory. You might ship 100% of your committed features on time and still see your North Star metric stay completely flat because you never validated the underlying logic of why those features mattered.
The Monday Morning Audit
Take a look at your current roadmap. For every item on there, ask yourself: "What specific strategic bet are we making here, and how will we know if we were wrong?" If you can't answer that, you don't have a roadmap problem—you have a strategy problem.
Sources & Further Reading: