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From rampstack-skills
Builds multi-quarter roadmaps from a backlog of ideas and requests, sequencing dependent work, balancing build vs improve vs maintain, and producing defensible plans. Activates on planning, prioritization, and dependency mapping.
npx claudepluginhub rampstackco/claude-skills --plugin rampstack-skillsHow this skill is triggered — by the user, by Claude, or both
Slash command
/rampstack-skills:roadmap-planningThe summary Claude sees in its skill listing — used to decide when to auto-load this skill
Take a pile of ideas, requests, and ongoing work. Produce a defensible plan for what to ship, when, and why. The output is a roadmap document plus the prioritization work that made it credible.
Guides product managers through strategic roadmap planning: prioritization, epic definition, stakeholder alignment, and release sequencing. Use to turn strategy into an actionable release plan.
Builds a strategic product roadmap in Now/Next/Later format with quarterly themes, milestones, dependency mapping, resource allocation, and stakeholder communication templates.
Generates Now/Next/Later product roadmaps from lists of features, priorities, or initiatives, with themes, dependencies, T-shirt effort sizing, and strategic rationales. Saves as Markdown file.
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Take a pile of ideas, requests, and ongoing work. Produce a defensible plan for what to ship, when, and why. The output is a roadmap document plus the prioritization work that made it credible.
pm-spec-writing)ux-research)design-standards)launch-runbook)after-action-report)If the strategy is missing, the roadmap will be a list of features, not a plan. Push back and get the strategy first. A roadmap without strategy is just a queue.
Roadmaps fail at five different layers. A roadmap is only as good as its weakest one.
Top-level groupings tied to strategy. Every theme answers: "If we do nothing else this period, this is the outcome we want."
Good themes are:
Bad themes look like a junk drawer: "Improvements," "Tech debt," "Misc." If it can't be defended in one sentence, it isn't a theme.
Multi-week or multi-month efforts that ladder up to a theme. Each initiative is bigger than a feature but smaller than a theme. Initiatives have:
Initiatives are where stakeholders push hard. Resist the urge to commit to dates here. Commit to outcomes and rough sizes.
The order things happen. Sequencing is constrained by:
Build the sequence after the prioritization. Putting things in time-order before deciding what matters produces a plan optimized for calendar fit, not impact.
Most roadmaps fail here. The plan looks good on paper but assumes 100% of every person's time on roadmap work. Real capacity is much lower.
Default capacity assumptions:
If the math says the plan needs 100% of the team, the plan is wrong. Cut.
Every roadmap has a "Not now" list as important as the "Doing" list. The "Not now" is what makes the plan defensible.
Include:
Stakeholders pushing for cut items can argue against the rejection criteria, not the omission. That's a productive argument.
Before touching the backlog, write down 3 to 5 themes. If the team's OKRs or strategy doc gives you these, copy them. If not, draft them and validate with the people who own strategy.
If the strategy is missing or vague, stop. Producing a roadmap against an unclear strategy is worse than producing nothing. Surface the gap.
Every candidate gets:
Items with "no theme" are warning flags. Either the theme list is incomplete, or the item should be cut.
Inside each theme, rank the initiatives. Use one prioritization framework consistently. Common ones:
The framework matters less than the consistency. Pick one. Use it the same way for every initiative. Document the math.
See references/prioritization-frameworks.md for the full breakdown.
For every "Doing" initiative, list what must happen first:
Visualize as a graph or a Gantt-style sequence. Items with no dependencies can start immediately. Items with multiple unmet dependencies are warning flags.
Now place initiatives in time. Use the dependency map. Use the capacity math. Match initiatives to people who can actually do them.
Default cadence: month-by-month for one quarter, quarter-by-quarter beyond that. Weekly is too granular for most roadmaps. Half-year buckets are too vague to commit to.
Before sharing externally, validate with the people doing the work:
If the team says the plan is impossible, the plan is impossible. Adjust. Going to leadership with a plan the team disagrees with is how trust gets broken.
For every "Doing" item, name what got cut to make room. Document why. Document the trigger that would move it to "Doing" later.
Different audiences need different views:
The same roadmap should produce all four. If it can't, the roadmap is incomplete.
A list of features instead of a plan. Themes are missing. The roadmap is a backlog with months attached. Fix: start over from strategy.
Date-driven thinking. "What can we ship by end of Q2?" instead of "What is the most important thing to do in Q2?" Dates are constraints, not goals.
Capacity fantasy. The plan adds up to 100% of every person's time. No room for support, interrupts, planning, or unknown unknowns. Roadmap dies in week three.
Stakeholder pressure overrides strategy. A loud customer or executive request gets prioritized because they pushed hard, not because it ladders up. The "Not now" list saves you here.
Missing dependencies. Initiative B depends on initiative A, but A is scheduled later. Or A depends on a hire that hasn't happened. The plan looks fine until execution starts.
Too far out. Specific commitments six months out create promises the team can't keep. Use ranges or themes for far horizons, specifics for near horizons.
One framework for every level. RICE for the whole roadmap including platform work, infra, and exploration. RICE is great for features, weak for foundational work. Use different lenses for different initiative types.
No "Not now." Stakeholders rediscover their cut requests every two weeks because there's no record of why they were cut. Document once, point to it forever.
The roadmap document includes:
The roadmap is a living document. Plan to revisit it monthly. Replan it formally each quarter. Do not treat it as a contract.
references/prioritization-frameworks.md - Detailed breakdown of RICE, MoSCoW, Kano, Cost of Delay, and Strategic Alignment frameworks. When to use each, how to apply them, common mistakes.