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Managing Products as Investments

Managing many products as a set of investments, not a pile of roadmaps.

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Once an organization ships more than one product, the PM job expands from 'what's the best roadmap for this product' to 'what's the best allocation across all of them.'

1From Feature Backlog to Investment Portfolio

A portfolio view treats each product or major initiative like a position in a financial portfolio: it has an expected return, a risk profile, and a resourcing cost. Reviewing the portfolio means periodically asking which bets are earning their keep, which deserve more investment, and which should be wound down — a conversation that a single-product roadmap never forces.

2Reviewing and Rebalancing

Portfolios drift. A Horizon 2 bet that succeeds should graduate toward Horizon 1 funding; a Horizon 3 experiment that keeps missing its milestones should be cut before it quietly becomes a permanent tax on the roadmap. Set a fixed cadence — quarterly is common — to formally re-rank every product against the others, rather than letting allocation decisions happen ad hoc whenever someone complains loudest.

3Step-by-Step Breakdown

Introduction. A single-product roadmap answers 'what do we build next.' A product portfolio answers a harder question: across every product and initiative the org runs, where should scarce engineering time and money go? Portfolio thinking is resource allocation at the company level, not the feature level.

The Three Horizons. McKinsey's Three Horizons model buckets initiatives by time horizon and risk: Horizon 1 is the core business generating revenue today, Horizon 2 is adjacent bets extending that core, and Horizon 3 is exploratory, high-risk bets on what comes next. A healthy portfolio funds all three, not just Horizon 1.

Avoiding the Peanut-Butter Spread. The most common portfolio mistake is spreading resources evenly across every product 'so nothing feels neglected.' That guarantees nothing gets enough investment to actually win. Strong portfolio management means deliberately overfunding a few bets and starving or sunsetting the rest.

Knowledge Check. In the Three Horizons model, what does Horizon 3 represent?

→Exploratory, high-risk bets on future opportunities that may not pay off for years
→The current core business generating the majority of today's revenue

Summary. Building a product portfolio means stepping back from any single roadmap and asking whether the whole set of bets is balanced, funded deliberately, and reviewed on a regular cadence — not just whichever product shouts loudest for headcount.

Pascual Vila

Frontend Instructor // Code Syllabus

Common Pitfalls & Errors

The Error //

Spreading resources evenly across every initiative

// Wrong
5 products, 5 engineers each -> nothing ships fast enough to matter

// Right
Core product: 15 engineers | Top growth bet: 8 engineers | Experiment: 2 engineers

The Solution //

An even split feels fair but guarantees no bet gets enough investment to actually win. Concentrate resources on the few initiatives with the strongest evidence of return, even if that means starving others.

The Error //

Never retiring low-performing products

// Wrong
"We've invested three years in this, we can't shut it down now."

// Right
"Sunset criteria: <2% of revenue and flat growth for 3 straight quarters -> deprecate."

The Solution //

Products kept alive out of sentiment or sunk-cost thinking quietly drain support, engineering, and marketing attention from the bets that matter. Define sunset criteria up front so the decision to cut isn't emotional later.