Portfolio of bets II -- [Incubation] Roadmap

Workstream Discussion Product (features & roadmap)
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Workstream leader’s log (Earth July 1):vulcan_salute:

  • While sitting down to publish this roadmap proposal –late even though I promised Friday– I realized that the roadmap I had inherited, that I had worked on planning/revising, was a feature factory 🙀. I’ve built them before by accident. They suck and make everyone miserable. If you compound that misery through a flat org like a DAO it’s a recipe for burnout and disaster.

    So here we find ourselves, dear DAO member, with a workstream leader branching out to do something a little different: extending the ShapeShift incubation period, normally only 3 days, working together as workstreams in the DAO, aligning and shipping a roadmap in two parts:

    1. A spreadsheet and 2) it’s high level document to the forum. From there the voting proposal.

    Doing so will mean voting will be:

    concise

  • clear
  • transparent
  • aligned around our constraints
  • Back-linked for easy access and accountability

Collaborating with other workstream leads and their explicit sign off, we will ship a roadmap to ideation that looks like this:

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What that means is:

We hold synchronous time in figjams or even just pile’s in discord for a week or two, compiling notes and work towards a set of business lines we can be proud of. The first line is the API, the second line is the interface with a fresh set of product rigor. I will no longer follow a next-feature fallacy. We’re building something people want, that provides high value for them with a sense of craft.

So with that out of the way:

Motivation

here is the notion doc

  • for where one can see work in progress.

here is the spreadsheet template

  • I want to use that i forked from some friends at airbnb (and have used before)

If the goals set up mental models, frameworks for collaboration, and an overarching portfolio of bets this eventual proposal explains the details of bets with timelines of now, next, and later

  1. .

    For simplicity’s sake, framing initiatives or features as one of three things:

    Rocks

  2. Rocks are big and heavy, they form the basis of our portfolio and will get the priority focus for product and engineering until we have them placed.
  3. Pebbles
  4. Pebbles are easier to manage but still slippery. Getting them right right requires a few loops. However! the rigor with better long form and mini specs we introduced in the past two months is encouraging. By speccing, spiking, and exploring within the discovery and definition phases, it will be easier placing the pebbles and sand around the rocks.
  5. Sand
  6. Sand are all the little tasks that don’t quite fit in a mini spec but are just quality of life, polish, and simple additions that make experiences better for users and developers.

Now we have a formula: {the specs give the what and why[ name & business case]} + {the size of the work [rock/pebble/sand],} + {the when [now next later]} + {statuses [draft, discovery, definition, hand off/execution]} = Shipping.

Northstars

  • Marching towards our north stars means planning our roadmap around those three types of work and tagging them as now, next, and later. Adjusting in real time will happen every Monday, as usual.

    Get the API to market and get customers [ 25 ?]

  • weekly active transactors goes to 300
  • Monetizeable Volume goes above 500K
  • Trading volume gets to 750k.
  • Cumulative transactions goes to ~15000

Critical note: A roadmap should be considered a ‘point in time’ artifact instead of a contract for the quarter. Things will and do change. This will be updated with living retros as touchpoints along the way. The product workstream lead will aim for biweekly, around office hours.

Will be updating this post, with timestamps if necessary, as incubation proceeds.