Aug 14, 2026
The Transcript:
This is 60 Seconds of Writing in Public with Johanna Rothman for August 14, 2026, where I read an excerpt of just a minute of some writing in progress.
This is from the Continual Planning book.
How can you tell when planning outpaces delivery? Look for old items under consideration.
For example, how old is the oldest item on your team's board or in your backlog? Or, how old is the oldest item on your product roadmap? How old is the oldest item in your portfolio?
Many organizations have items, backlog items, roadmap items, and projects, that are years old, especially if you count what's in the defect-tracking system or a given product's roadmap. I have seen defect-tracking systems that contain *decades* worth of data. Sometimes, for retired products.
That's an effect of people being afraid to throw out old ideas.