Non-Roadmap Work is Still Roadmap Work: How to plan for the inevitable without lying to yourself
Hook
Every team claims they’re doing 100% roadmap work. Every team also spends huge time on support, incidents, requests, and migrations.
Thesis
If you don’t plan for non-roadmap work, you’re not being optimistic, you’re being inaccurate.
The honest capacity model
If 25% of your time is support/incidents/requests, plan it. Otherwise the roadmap is fiction and stakeholders lose trust.
Three buckets
- Committed roadmap, 2) Run-the-business (ops/support), 3) Investment (platform/debt). Put percentages on each.
How to communicate
Explain what changes when unplanned work spikes: which roadmap items slip and why. Transparency builds trust.
Operational mechanisms
Triage rotation, SLAs for interrupts, and a monthly retro that converts recurring interrupts into planned roadmap items.
Actionable takeaways
- Plan for interrupts; don’t pretend they aren’t real.
- Bucket capacity and make it explicit.
- Make tradeoffs explicit when interrupts spike.
- Convert recurring interrupts into roadmap work.