Validate Product Direction Before Scaling

Company Context

TaskFlow is a B2B SaaS startup that sells workflow automation software to mid-sized operations teams. The company has 12,000 paying accounts, $28M ARR, and strong adoption among tech-forward customers, but expansion revenue has slowed over the last two quarters.

Problem

TaskFlow's leadership believes the product team is moving too quickly into delivery optimization—faster sprint velocity, cleaner architecture, and better release tooling—without enough confidence that the roadmap is solving the most important customer problems. In the last 6 months, the team shipped 14 workflow enhancements, but only 3 features reached more than 20% adoption among eligible accounts. Churn interviews show a recurring theme: customers say the product is "powerful, but not aligned with our day-to-day bottlenecks."

The CEO asks you, as the incoming Group Product Manager, to define how you would ensure the team is building the right thing before optimizing how it is built. You need to create a repeatable approach that works across discovery, prioritization, and early validation.

Deliverables

1. Define how you would determine whether the team is solving the right customer problem before committing engineering resources.
2. Identify which users or segments you would prioritize first, and explain why.
3. Propose a lightweight discovery and validation process for testing ideas before full-scale development.
4. Explain how you would make roadmap decisions when customer requests, sales pressure, and usage data conflict.
5. Define the success metrics you would use to know the new approach is working.

Constraints

• You have 1 product designer, 2 PMs, and limited user research support.
• Leadership expects visible process improvements within 90 days.
• Engineering capacity is tight: only 25% of the next quarter's roadmap can be used for discovery-driven bets.
• Sales is pushing for custom features for two large prospects worth $1.8M combined ARR.