Your Product Roadmap Needs a Diet

Founders love to build. Customers love to request. And before you know it, your product roadmap is 18 months long, packed with features that sounded good in a meeting but no one’s really asking for—or worse, no one will ever use.

This is how good products turn into bloated, unfocused messes. And it happens faster than you think.

What starts as a clean, clear product solving a real problem becomes a Swiss Army knife of half-baked features, edge-case solutions, and "must-haves" that barely move the needle.

Sound familiar? If so, it might be time to put your roadmap on a diet.

How Roadmaps Get Bloated

It’s usually not one big decision. It’s death by a thousand small yeses.

“Yes, we can add that for Enterprise clients.”
“Yes, we should match what Competitor X is doing.”
“Yes, that customer’s paying us a lot—we should build it.”

And it feels harmless. Helpful, even. Every feature comes with good intentions. But slowly, you start building a product for everyone, which really means you're building a product for no one.

Now your team is juggling too many priorities. Your product feels heavier. Your sales process gets more complicated. Support tickets pile up for features that shouldn’t have existed in the first place.

The Real Cost of “Just One More Feature”

Every feature you add creates work. Forever.

• It needs to be designed.
• It needs to be built.
• It needs to be supported.
• It needs to be maintained.
• It needs to be explained to customers.

The more you add, the slower you get. Not just in shipping new features, but in every part of your business. Product updates take longer. New hires take longer to onboard. Sales calls get bogged down explaining things that used to be obvious.

And worst of all? The core thing that made your product great gets lost in the clutter.

Focus on What’s Essential

The best products do a few things extremely well. They aren’t trying to solve every problem for every customer. They’re focused. Sharp. Opinionated.

When you’re thinking about what’s next on your roadmap, ask:

• Who is this feature really for?
• Does this solve a core problem for our best customers?
• If we don’t build this, what happens?
• If we do build this, what are we saying no to?

If you can’t answer those questions clearly, that feature probably doesn’t belong.

Trimming the Fat

Putting your roadmap on a diet doesn’t just mean stopping new features. Sometimes, it means cutting what’s already there.

Look through your product and ask:

• What features are barely used?
• What’s causing more confusion than value?
• What are we supporting that no one really cares about?

Then make the hard call. Simplify. Remove. Archive.

Yes, some customers will complain. But way more will appreciate the simplicity and clarity you bring back to the product.

Resist the Pressure to Build More

Your job as a founder isn’t to keep adding. Your job is to keep the product focused, clear, and valuable.

Anyone can say yes to everything. It takes discipline to say no.

So before you add another feature to the roadmap, ask yourself:

Does this make the product better—or just bigger?

Because the best products aren’t the ones that do the most.

They’re the ones that do the right things, exceptionally well.

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