Structure enables speed
Without a clear roadmap, individual effort is high and collective progress is low. Everyone’s busy, yet nothing ships. Talent goes to waste. Progress is illusory.
Lightweight, shared plans enable speed.
Most of the effort of a team should go into shipping towards the roadmap. The roadmap is a compass. A general direction to move in that feels right — for now. The what and why, not the exactly how.
A living roadmap beats a dead one. Old paths need updating, new waypoints need to be marked.
Without it, effort ends up duplicated. People and teams misaligned. Toes are stepped on, empty promises are made. Customers are sold a vision that never materializes.
With it, everybody knows what to build. Nobody’s doing random side projects. You can say no to distractions. Energy is focused and steady.
What this looks like in practice
- We’re building one thing this cycle
- The scope is tight — start with the core
- Ship something real in weeks, not months
- If it’s not on the roadmap it’s not happening
Bias towards tangible artifacts.
If you can’t show it to someone in two weeks, it’s too big.
Early UI. Simple backends. Feature flags. Learn by seeing and touching, not speculating.
Complexity can wait.
Cadence matters
Goals should move slower than projects.
Change direction too rarely and you drift. Change it too often and you thrash.
Context switching is expensive.
Good teams revisit where they’re going just enough and how they’re getting there all the time.
Set clear outcomes.
Let teams own the path.
Outcomes > ceremony
A 40-page spec isn’t structure, it’s pseudocode disguised as alignment.
Structure is knowing where you’re going. Over-planning is pretending you already know the terrain.
You don’t need to map every edge case. You need to start moving.
Structure and limitations box things in just enough to enable great outcomes. The decision paralysis of an unlimited decision space is swamp-like. Progress becomes hard, tedious and unrewarding.
The teams that struggle sit at the extremes: thrashing or paralysis.
Structure isn’t the enemy, it’s the outline.