Plan a strategic roadmap across prioritization, epic definition, stakeholder alignment, and sequencing. Use when turning strategy into a release plan that teams can execute.
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Slash command/roadmap-planning
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Plan a strategic roadmap across prioritization, epic definition, stakeholder alignment, and sequencing. Use when turning strategy into a release plan that teams can execute.
---name: roadmap-planning
argument-hint: "[product and planning horizon]"
description: Plan a strategic roadmap across prioritization, epic definition, stakeholder alignment, and sequencing. Use when turning strategy into a release plan that teams can execute.
intent: >-
Guide product managers through strategic roadmap planning by orchestrating prioritization, epic definition, stakeholder alignment, and release sequencing skills into a structured process. Use this to move from disconnected feature requests to a cohesive, outcome-driven roadmap that aligns stakeholders, sequences work logically, and communicates strategic intent—avoiding "feature factory" roadmaps that lack strategic narrative or customer-centric framing.
type: workflow
theme: strategy-positioning
best_for:
- "Building a strategic roadmap that survives exec review"
- "Prioritizing competing initiatives across multiple teams"
- "Planning and sequencing work for the next quarter or half-year"
scenarios:
- "I have 15 competing initiatives and need to build a Q2 roadmap my exec team will actually approve"
- "I'm planning our 6-month product roadmap and need to sequence work across 3 teams"
estimated_time: "45-90 min"
---## Purpose
Guide product managers through strategic roadmap planning by orchestrating prioritization, epic definition, stakeholder alignment, and release sequencing skills into a structured process. Use this to move from disconnected feature requests to a cohesive, outcome-driven roadmap that aligns stakeholders, sequences work logically, and communicates strategic intent—avoiding "feature factory" roadmaps that lack strategic narrative or customer-centric framing.
This is not a Gantt chart—it's a strategic communication tool that shows what you're building, why it matters, and how it ladders up to business outcomes.
## Input
**Works best with:** The product and planning horizon (next quarter, next year).
**Also useful:** Strategy or OKRs to ladder to, the candidate initiative list, team capacity, and known stakeholder pressures.
Anything supplied with the invocation itself — text after the skill name, a pasted context dump, or an appended `ARGUMENTS:` line — counts as answers already given. Use it and skip whatever it covers; don't re-ask.
**Arriving empty-handed? That works too.** The workflow starts by establishing strategic context, then moves through prioritization, epic definition, and sequencing.
**Example invocation:** `Plan a 2-quarter roadmap for our mobile app: here are our 3 OKRs and a list of 12 candidate initiatives.`
## Key Concepts
### What is Strategic Roadmap Planning?
Roadmap planning is the process of:
1. **Gathering inputs** — Customer problems, business goals, technical constraints
2. **Defining initiatives** — Epics with clear hypotheses and success metrics
3. **Prioritizing** — Rank initiatives by impact, effort, strategic fit
4. **Sequencing** — Organize into releases/quarters with logical dependencies
5. **Communicating** — Present roadmap to stakeholders with strategic narrative
- **For each initiative:** Write hypothesis statement
- **Format:** "We believe that [building X] for [persona] will achieve [outcome] because [assumption]."
- **Participants:** PM
- **Duration:** 60 minutes per epic
- **Output:** 10-15 epic hypotheses
**Example Epics (SaaS Product):**
```
Epic 1: Guided Onboarding
Hypothesis: We believe that adding a step-by-step onboarding checklist for non-technical users will increase activation rate from 40% to 60% because users currently drop off due to lack of guidance.
Success Metric: Activation rate (% completing first action within 24 hours)
Target: 40% → 60%
Epic 2: Enterprise SSO
Hypothesis: We believe that adding SSO for enterprise accounts will increase enterprise deals closed from 2/quarter to 5/quarter because enterprise buyers require SSO for security compliance.
Success Metric: Enterprise deals closed per quarter
Target: 2 → 5
Epic 3: Mobile-Optimized Workflows
Hypothesis: We believe that optimizing core workflows for mobile will increase mobile DAU from 5% to 20% because mobile-first users currently can't complete workflows on the go.
Success Metric: Mobile DAU as % of total DAU
Target: 5% → 20%
```
**2. Estimate Effort (T-Shirt Sizing)**
- **Participants:** PM + engineering lead
- **Duration:** 90 minutes
- **Method:**
- **Small (S):** 1-2 weeks (1-2 engineers)
- **Medium (M):** 3-4 weeks (2-3 engineers)
- **Large (L):** 2-3 months (3-5 engineers)
- **Extra Large (XL):** 3+ months (5+ engineers)
- **Output:** Effort estimate per epic
**3. Map to Business Outcomes**
- **For each epic:** Tag with primary business outcome
