IntermediateLEADERSHIP
As a senior full-stack developer, how would you shape a 6–12 month technical roadmap for a product area to support scaling and new features while balancing legacy debt, team capacity, and business priorities? Include how you’d get buy-in and measure progress.
Full Stack Developer
General

Sample Answer

When I led the checkout product at a mid‑stage company with 500k MAUs, I built a 6–12 month roadmap by first mapping business outcomes (reduce cart abandonment by 15%, launch subscriptions) against technical risks (legacy monolith, 2x traffic spikes). I split the roadmap into quarterly themes: stability & observability month 1–3, API refactor and feature scaffolding month 4–8, and feature launches month 9–12. I allocated 30% of cyclical capacity to targeted debt reduction (aiming to cut hotpath latency by 40%) and used spike tickets to de-risk big moves. For buy‑in I presented cost/benefit numbers to PMs and execs, ran two-week demos for stakeholders, and negotiated a clear rollback plan. Progress was measured weekly via cycle time, error rate, API p95 latency, and quarterly business KPIs—after 6 months we cut incidents by 60% and increased feature throughput by 45%.

Keywords

Align roadmap with measurable business outcomes and technical risksTimebox debt reduction (e.g., 30% capacity) and use quarterly themesGet buy-in with ROI numbers, demos, and rollback plansMeasure via engineering metrics (cycle time, p95 latency) and business KPIs