Roadmap Intake and Baseline Lock (Onboarding)

Roadmap Intake and Baseline Lock (Onboarding)

1. 01

   Inventory every open request the client has raised in the last two quarters

   Pull from whatever intake surface the account already uses, whether that is a shared inbox, a call transcript, or a public request board. The goal is a single list, not a filtered one.

2. 02

   Tag each request by evidence type: client-stated, usage data, or account team inference

   Requests that exist only because an account manager heard them in a call get a lower confidence label than ones backed by a support ticket count or a usage drop.

3. 03

   Score the list against two axes the client already agrees on: reach and revenue exposure

   Avoid inventing a proprietary scoring model on the first engagement. Reuse the client's own success metrics so the ranking survives their internal review.

4. 04

   Draft the first roadmap in Now-Next-Later bands rather than dated quarters

   ProdPad popularized this format for a reason: it survives schedule slips without a full renegotiation, which matters when a retainer client asks why a date moved.

5. 05

   Publish the roadmap where the client can see it without asking the agency for a status update

   A shared view in Productboard, airfocus, or ProductPlan beats a PDF attachment that goes stale the day after the kickoff call.

6. 06

   Write down the three assumptions the sequence depends on and send them to the client for confirmation

   Assumptions about team capacity, third-party API readiness, and approval turnaround are the usual sources of drift. Naming them in writing converts a future argument into a signed baseline.

7. 07

   Set the change-control rule before the first change request arrives

   State plainly that anything added to Now displaces something else, and that the displaced item gets named in the same thread. This is the negotiation lever, and it only works if it is established early.