Product ownership, roadmap theory, lifecycle, kill criteria¶
One accountable owner¶
A product needs one accountable owner. Not one builder; one person who owns:
WHO IT IS FOR
WHY IT EXISTS
WHAT GETS BUILT
WHAT DOES NOT
PRIORITY
OUTCOME
ECONOMICS
ROADMAP
SUCCESS
Without ownership the roadmap becomes a collection of stakeholder requests. The corpus states the estate is solo-operated: the founder is the owner of every product unless a definition names someone else with their agreement. Agent roles (MAYOR, WITNESS, REFINERY lanes) execute; they do not own products.
Vision, strategy, roadmap, backlog, release plan¶
These are five artifacts. Keep them separate:
| Artifact | Answers | Lives in |
|---|---|---|
| Vision | What world exists when this works | products/<Product>/Vision.md |
| Strategy | Which bets, in what order, and what we will not do | Vision.md or the definition |
| Roadmap | Outcomes and betting sequence over time | products/<Product>/Roadmap.md |
| Backlog | Candidate work, unordered | Beads |
| Release plan | What ships when | GitLab milestones, release train |
A roadmap represents outcomes, problems, and a betting sequence, not Feature A, B, C. A roadmap is not a promise to build everything listed.
Lifecycle stage decides priorities¶
Discovery: learning per dollar. Validation: first payment. Introduction: references. Growth: repeatable acquisition and retention. Maturity: margin and moat. Decline: decide, do not roadmap. Retirement: migration path and archive with evidence.
Kill criteria¶
Every definition includes kill criteria with a number, a threshold, and a date, plus the exit
decision options: sell, validate with prospects, defer, stop. Write them before enthusiasm makes
them impossible to write. See mvp-validation.md.
Rules of thumb (enforceable)¶
- Start with the problem, not the implementation.
- A user is not necessarily a buyer.
- A feature is not a product. Infrastructure is not automatically a product.
- "Everyone" is not a target audience.
- If everything is a priority, there is no strategy.
- Demand is stronger evidence than compliments. Payment is stronger than survey enthusiasm.
- Distribution is part of the product strategy.
- The best product does not necessarily win; the product people understand, trust, discover, and adopt often does.
- Brand reduces the cost of explanation. Price communicates positioning.
- Usage is not value unless it produces an outcome.
- Revenue without margin may be a liability. Growth without retention is leakage.
- An MVP tests uncertainty; it does not merely reduce scope.
- Do not automate something nobody wants. Do not scale before proving repeatability.
- No new repo. Curate what exists.