Seasonality Will Drive Your Roadmap

One of the biggest mistakes I've made in the past and see all the time consulting is roadmap planning without putting seasonality front and center.

Pretty much every business has a seasonality curve. Everyone intuitively knows this, but when it comes to planning on a quarter by quarter basis, there's often an assumption that every quarter works about the same as any other.

Your customers have a seasonal cadence, and it is going to have a huge impact on yours whether you plan for it or not.

You need to have your biggest releases ready - with all the launch prep lead time that entails - in time for when they're going to be open to things like making the time, space, and budget to add something new.

I doubt many people are going to pay close attention to your big release as of this writing in late July when there's a decent chance they're on a family vacation.

It's more impactful to stack up the foundational improvements and shore up your existing offering when buyers and users are more focused on using what you make to accomplish what they bought it to do.

That doesn't mean you can't get a big win at any time of the year, but it's wise to be mindful of the ebbs and flows of your customer's year and work backwards from that.