Build a roadmap

Fernhill roadmap, Q1 and Q2

The call: Both squads go to the company goal: deliveries and invoices, the top reasons independents give for leaving. Calder gets a bounded share of capacity, not the roadmap. Calder's report builder can't ship before May, so we tell them that directly and commit to a scoped plan.

Why this split: - The receiving and invoice chains (30 of 40 squad-weeks) serve 32 different non-Calder accounts. Mobile receiving and flagging short deliveries touch 16 accounts. Invoice matching, credit notes and the accounting export touch 16. - Calder has 14 of the 53 requests, but they come from one account. Every Calder-only item totals 29 squad-weeks (report builder, ERP export, site permissions, SSO, approval chains). Taking all of it would consume 73% of the half. - Usage backs the sequence. 56% of accounts use the receiving checklist, but 71% of uses start on a desktop and get re-typed from paper, so mobile receiving removes that step. Invoice matching is manual for the 76% of accounts that upload invoices.

Capacity: 2 squads × 10 squad-weeks per quarter. The plan uses 40 of 40, with a 1-week spike per squad left at the end of Q2 for report builder scoping.

Dependencies are the risk. Item 2 gates the invoice chain. If the parser slips, items 3, 6 and 7 slip with it, and the invoice outcome misses the half. I'd rather flag that now than hide it inside the plan. If the parser runs over, the first move is to pull the Calder-only site permissions work (item 8) back into the buffer.

Measures: Time per delivery receipt and percentage of invoices auto-matched, tracked per cohort. Independent-restaurant churn (2.4% → 1.6% a month) is the outcome. We won't claim the roadmap alone moves it.

What we're not doing, and why

• Full custom report builder (12 weeks). It's 60% of one squad's half, for one account, and the earliest it ships is around the May renewal with no slack. We do a scoping spike and commit to a decision date, not a build date.
• SSO (3) and approval chains with 5 levels (6). Calder only, and the 5-level approvals request is a niche configuration. H2 candidates, to be revisited with Calder.
• Custom PDF invoices, custom order fields, per-site dashboards, bulk SKU import v2 and bulk SKU edit. All Calder-only, none estimated. Not in H1.
• Dark mode (2 accounts), multi-currency (1 account), more suppliers (3 accounts). Low demand, no estimates. Parked, not rejected.
• Scheduled reports by email (Calder, 2 requests). Not estimated. It goes into the spike as a candidate for a smaller Calder deliverable.

What we tell Calder Group

1. Customer Success calls them this week, not the account manager alone. They haven't raised the report builder with CS, and "might leave" is the kind of risk that surfaces too late.
2. Be direct about the report builder: it's a substantial build, it won't land before May, and we won't promise a date we can't keep.
3. What they get in H1: the ERP export in the format they asked for, shipping around early May, and site-level permissions by the end of June.
4. The report builder: we scope it with them in June, and we commit to an H2 decision date by the end of June. We don't commit to a build date until the spike returns.
5. Ask them two things: which reports they run daily (we know they use standard reports), and what minimum output would cover them until the full builder ships. Their answer decides whether scheduled email reports move up.

Asks for leadership: confirm Calder's renewal status and ARR before the CS call, and approve the spike's two squad-weeks. If Calder won't engage on the scoped plan, we should know before the roadmap is shared externally.

Fernhill H1 roadmap (Q1–Q2)

The plan: 30 of our 40 squad-weeks go to the delivery-to-invoice workflow that exit surveys blame for churn. 4 go to Calder's ERP export, and 6 are held as buffer. We are not building the report builder.

Assumption: I've treated the invoice parser (5) as additional to invoice matching (9), so matching is 14 weeks in total. If the 9 already includes the parser, we gain 5 weeks of buffer and nothing else changes.

Roadmap

Why this order

• Outcome. The goal is churn among independent restaurants, and the top exit reason is admin on deliveries and invoices. Receiving and invoicing are exactly that workflow.
• Demand. The request log is consistent with the usage data, though it shows who asks rather than who churns, so the exit survey and usage numbers carry more weight.
• Mobile receiving: 9 customers, about $60k ARR.
• Matching: 8 customers, about $45k.
• Short deliveries: 7 customers, about $48k.
• Credit notes: 4 customers.
• Export with credits: 4 customers, about $28k.
• Sequencing. The invoicing chain is strictly sequential, so it takes one squad for 19 of its 20 weeks. The receiving chain runs in parallel on the other squad.
• ERP export before flagging. Calder's renewal has a hard date, and flagging doesn't. The export is two requests from Calder and the cheapest of their asks. It lands mid-April.
• Timing risk. Mobile receiving ships around the end of March and matching around the end of April. Churn lags adoption, so I expect only partial movement toward 1.6% by June. I'd report leading indicators monthly (mobile share of receiving, auto-match rate) alongside churn, and set that expectation with the exec team now.

What we're not doing, and why

• Custom report builder (12 weeks), plus dashboards, scheduling and custom PDFs.
• Calder is the only requester of anything in the Reporting theme. Only 19% of accounts use standard reports at all.
• The cost is 30% of H1 capacity. One squad would need all of Q1 plus two weeks of Q2, which pushes about 10 weeks of churn work out of H1.
• The churn threat behind it is unverified (see below).
• Approval chains (6), site-level permissions (4), SSO (3), custom fields, bulk SKU import v2 and bulk edit. These are all Calder-only. The three that have estimates total 13 weeks, with no independent-restaurant demand and no link to the churn reason.
• More suppliers (3 customers), dark mode (2), multi-currency (1). They're unestimated and unconnected to the admin-time problem. I'll revisit them in the H2 planning.

The Calder rows are 14 of the 53 log entries (26%), but they come from one account via its account manager. Counted by customer, they are one voice. The log also has small inconsistencies, such as Customer 553 appearing twice with different ARR, so treat its figures as approximate.

Calder Group

What we know. Their account manager says they "might" leave without the report builder. They haven't said this to Customer Success, and their usage is up 20%, which looks like engagement rather than exit. It's a risk to test, not a requirement.

What we do internally 1. In the first two weeks of January, Customer Success and I meet Calder directly. We ask which decisions they need reports for, what standard reports lack, and whether the ERP export plus raw data in their own tools meets the need. 2. Ask the account manager to give us one ranked list from Calder instead of 14 separate asks. 3. Have engineering size a thin reporting slice (for example, scheduled standard reports). There's no estimate today. It can only be funded from the 6-week buffer, and only if the January conversation shows reporting is a real blocker. 4. Checkpoint at the end of February. If Calder confirms in writing that reporting decides the renewal, I bring the exec team a trade-off. The full builder means dropping the credit-note tail and the ERP export and running with zero buffer, and it still wouldn't ship by May.

What we tell Calder - "We've heard your reporting needs and want to understand them properly. We'd like an hour with your team in January." - "Your ERP export is on our roadmap and is due mid-April, ahead of your May renewal. We'll confirm the format with you first." - "The full report builder isn't in our plan for the first half. We'll tell you by the end of February whether a smaller reporting improvement is feasible."

We make no date commitment for the builder and no promise on SSO, permissions or approval chains. If the ERP export slips, Calder hears it from us before they find out themselves.

Risks to watch

• Parser or matching slips. The buffer absorbs up to six weeks. Beyond that, credit notes and the accounting export move to H2, not receiving.
• Calder's real blocker turns out to be reporting. That is the trade-off decision at the end-of-February checkpoint, made with real information instead of a "might".

H1 roadmap: remove delivery and invoice admin

Prioritise the receiving-to-invoice workflow, not a general reporting platform. Our goal is to reduce independent-restaurant monthly churn from 2.4% to 1.6%. These customers represent 82% of accounts and 61% of revenue; their leading exit reason directly names delivery and invoice admin.

The evidence supports this choice: - Invoice upload reaches 76% of accounts, but matching remains manual. - Receiving reaches 56%, with substantial paper-to-desktop re-entry. - Mobile receiving, invoice matching and shortage flagging attracted requests from 9, 8 and 7 customers, respectively. - Calder’s multiple requests represent one $186,000 account, not repeated incremental ARR. Its renewal risk warrants investigation, but the report-builder threat is currently second-hand and usage is growing.

Sequenced delivery plan

Squad names below describe their H1 ownership. Estimates are squad-weeks; each squad has ten per quarter.

Capacity: committed feature builds total 30 of 40 squad-weeks. The other ten are explicitly allocated to rollout, quality, adoption and contingency—not assumed available for an extra large feature. Each squad stays within its quarterly limit.

The two squads must agree early on delivery-line identifiers, received quantities and discrepancy states. Invoice matching must still handle ordinary deliveries without waiting for shortage flagging.

Success measures and checkpoints

The primary measure is independent-restaurant monthly churn, tracked monthly against the 1.6% goal. Report results by adoption cohort, while recognising that adoption alone does not prove causation.

In the first two weeks, baseline: - Admin minutes per delivery and invoice. - Paper/re-entry frequency. - Manual matching effort, match accuracy and exception rate. - Credit resolution time.

Set numerical improvement targets after that baseline, rather than inventing savings from request counts. Confirm pilot customers include independent restaurants; the request log does not establish every requester’s segment.

At the Q1 review, assess mobile adoption, time saved and parser readiness. During Q2, expand releases only when accuracy and support burden are acceptable. If adoption is weak, spend the reserved capacity removing friction before widening scope.

What we are not doing

• Custom report builder this half: 12 weeks would take the selected feature programme to 42 weeks before rollout or contingency. Standard reporting has 19% penetration; Calder’s daily use makes its needs worth understanding, but does not establish broad demand for a builder.
• ERP export: four weeks is feasible in isolation, but is not presently justified ahead of workflow adoption and reliability. Revisit only with verified renewal requirements and an explicit capacity trade-off.
• Approval chains, site permissions and SSO: defer; they do not directly address the leading churn reason.
• Custom dashboards, scheduled reports, custom PDFs/fields, SKU tooling, more suppliers, dark mode and multi-currency: no H1 commitment. Several lack estimates, and universal catalogue usage is not evidence that catalogue enhancements will reduce churn.

What we tell Calder Group

Hold a joint PM, CS and account-manager conversation early in Q1—not just before May. Validate who requires the builder, which decisions it supports, and whether renewal actually depends on it.

Tell them:

> “Our H1 investment is reducing delivery and invoice administration. A custom report builder is not committed for this half. We want to understand your specific reporting gaps and test whether existing reports or a bounded export can meet them before renewal.”

Agree a written reporting-gap assessment and a pre-renewal checkpoint. Any newly verified retention requirement triggers a leadership trade-off decision—not an uncosted promise or a quiet roadmap diversion.