May 15, 2026
There are two lists. One of them gets all the attention. The wishlist is the obvious one.
Every team has one and it tends to grow on its own without any editing, picking up ideas from Product roadmapA view of the product investments, problems or outcomes a team expects to work on over time.Learn more conversations and customer calls and that one thing the CEO mentioned once (or ten times).
The other one most teams never write down. It's the 'never' list (call it what you want). It is a deliberate record of things that have been looked at and decided are not worth building or even spending time discovering.
Without it, the roadmap fills up the way a garage does, one reasonable and useful thing at a time. Eventually you look at it and say "WTF happened here" but can't quite explain how it got to be this shape.
Someone always remembers why that feature got killed two years ago. The problem is it's usually just one person, and they won't be around forever.
Every roadmap reflects a set of choices. The 'never' list is just the ones you made on purpose.
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I'm a father of 3 from Sydney, a product and technology leader. I write about leadership, product management, technology and the messy reality of making work work.
I'm currently building and experimenting with a mildly alarming number of things. I also work as a fractional product leader, stepping in where the founder or CEO is still carrying product decisions on their own, and offer 1:1 product leadership coaching for senior PMs and emerging product leaders. I founded SoundingBoard, practical peer exchange for product people. Connect via LinkedIn, or follow me on X.
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