Your Product Roadmap Should Reflect Your Brand Vision
4 min read
Product Strategy, Roadmaps, Brand, Focus, UX, Decision Making
Feature creep is easy. Focus is hard. The strongest products are built by knowing what to say no to, and by aligning every roadmap decision with a clear brand vision.
Struggling to keep your roadmap focused?
One of the hardest lessons I’ve learned in product work is this: just because you can add a feature doesn’t mean you should.
When I was working with NatWest, ideas were never in short supply. Every workshop surfaced new functionality. Every stakeholder had a “must-have.” But the real breakthroughs didn’t come from adding more. They came when we stripped things back and focused on what genuinely added value.
Simplicity is hard. Adding features is easy.
It’s easy to justify more with good intentions. Users will love it. It could set us apart. It might be useful one day. But over time, those decisions add up. Products become bloated. Development costs rise. UX suffers. Teams lose clarity on what actually matters.
The best products are defined as much by what they don’t do as by what they do.
The iPod and iPhone didn’t win because they had the most features. They won because they focused on doing a small number of things exceptionally well. That focus was not accidental. It was aligned to a clear vision of the brand and the experience Apple wanted people to have.
A product roadmap shouldn’t be a dumping ground for ideas. It should be a filter.
Every item on it should answer a few hard questions:
Does this make the product better, or just bigger?
Does this align with our brand and the experience we want to deliver?
Will users genuinely care, or are we solving an internal problem?
When a roadmap loses focus, it’s often a sign that brand vision is missing or unclear. Without that anchor, every idea feels equally valid. With it, decisions get easier. Saying no becomes possible.
More isn’t always better. Sometimes more is just more.
Strong products are built through restraint, clarity, and alignment. If your roadmap is growing in every direction, it’s usually worth stepping back and asking what you’re really trying to build, and why.
That’s where the best decisions tend to surface.