Principles of an outcome-based roadmap

An outcome-based roadmap is a visual plan that organizes initiatives around customer and business outcomes rather than lists of features. Its purpose is to guide teams toward solving problems instead of committing to predefined outputs. This shift promotes a customer-centric mindset, where value is measured by the change created, not by the number of releases.

Key principles include starting with product vision and business goals, then translating them into measurable outcomes. These outcomes should define what success looks like, such as increasing retention or reducing churn, and they need to be supported by metrics that can be tracked over time. The roadmap should remain flexible, allowing teams to test different solutions that address the same problem. Another principle is accountability. Work is not considered finished until the desired change is achieved, which encourages ownership and discourages the feature factory approach