Assessment FAQ · the roadmap deliverable
Severity-ordered backlogs stall.
The diagnostic ends in a list of gaps. A backlog ranked by severity buries quick, defensible wins under the biggest, hardest lines — so nothing ships and momentum dies. The roadmap ranks by effort-to-impact instead: the highest-leverage work is always next.
Effort-to-impact ships defensible wins early — and funds the harder lines with the credibility they buy.
What it really is
The roadmap is the budget conversation, pre-written: what it costs, what it moves, who’s on the hook, and the exact artefact that flips the answer to YES at re-assessment.
“Given all these gaps, what do we do first — and how do I defend that order?”
The answer
A ranked queue of fixes: owner, milestones, due date.
The fix is usually one or two skills from the pool, fitted to the function’s existing stack — never a new tool by default. Re-run the diagnostic and the closed lines flip to YES on evidence, so progress is measured, not asserted.