I hear a lot of confusion around a bunch of words.
These words are “mission”, “vision”, “strategy”, “roadmap”, “backlog”.
I get it: it’s all a bit vague, and they all connect together somehow, but let’s put some clarity in, so that you can stop hearing them used interchangeably as much.
Let’s start with Mission
Your Mission is your why. That’s it. Why are you in business? Why does this org exist? Why does your team get up in the morning and go to work?
Examples of good missions
- Tesla: “To accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy”
- Patagonia: “We’re in business to save our home planet”
- Your development team: “To build reliable software that makes users’ daily work easier”
Notice these aren’t about what you do, but why you do it. Tesla doesn’t say “we make electric cars” - they say why electric cars matter.
How to write your mission
- Write what you do as a team
- Ask “why” five times about what you do
- Keep it to one sentence
- Make it bigger than just making money
- Test it: does it help you decide what projects to take on?
Next let’s have our Vision
Once you have your why, you can envision what the world would look like if you accomplished all the things with your business, or org, or team, or project, or your life, even.
That’s your Vision.
Your vision is your story. If everything goes as you aim, what’s that looking like. It’s your “North Star”, your far away ideal objective.
Examples of good visions
- Microsoft: “A computer on every desk and in every home”
- Amazon (early): “To be Earth’s most customer-centric company”
- Your team: “Every employee in our company can complete their core workflows without frustration or delays”
How to write your vision
- Start with “In 5-10 years, the world will be different because…”
- Be specific enough that you’d know if you achieved it
- Be inspiring but believable
- Focus on impact, not just size
Then our Strategy
Your Strategy is the framework that allows you to make aligned decisions and choices. It should ideally encourage decisions and choices that drive towards your vision.
Strategy is where most teams go wrong. It’s not a list of things to do - it’s a framework for making decisions.
Examples of good strategies
- Netflix: “Focus on streaming, not physical media. Invest heavily in original content to differentiate from competitors.”
- Your team: “Prioritize automation over manual processes. Build for reliability first, features second. Always choose solutions that scale.”
How to develop your strategy
- Identify the 2-3 most important principles that guide decisions
- For each principle, give examples of what you’d choose (and what you’d reject)
- Test it against recent decisions - would this strategy have led to better choices?
At this point comes our Roadmap
That is your plan to get to the vision (or to some intermediate, realistic step in a non-trivial amount of time: you can have e.g. yearly roadmaps). Your strategy drives it. You use it to stay on the right track to accomplish your goals.
Your roadmap should typically be an ordered list of all the things people can expect from you, as well as of what they actually should not expect.
Example roadmap (simplified)
- Q1 2024: Launch user authentication system
- Q2 2024: Add data export functionality
- Q3 2024: Mobile app MVP
- Q4 2024: Advanced analytics dashboard
- Not on roadmap: Social features, AI integration, third-party marketplace
How to build your roadmap
- Break your vision into major milestones (usually quarterly or yearly)
- Apply your strategy to choose which initiatives to pursue
- Be explicit about what you’re NOT doing
- Review and update quarterly based on what you learn
And finally, your Backlog
Your backlog is the list of actual things you need to deliver, in some specific order, to actually deliver the work.
That is where all the stories and projects and day to day stuff lives. Here you ask, “what’s slowing you down”, or “do we need to rediscuss our approach”.
Now, there’s a whole other conversation about what should go on your backlog and what shouldn’t. But that’s for another time. For now let’s assume everything goes.
List here all the things you need to do to meet your goals as defined in the roadmap. If you struggle to see what goes here and what goes into your roadmap, here’s a hack: if it’s a standalone outcome it belongs to the roadmap; if it’s an action you need to perform as part of your effort to achieve an outcome, then it goes on the backlog.
Example backlog items
- User story: “As a user, I can reset my password via email”
- Bug fix: “Login page crashes on Safari mobile”
- Technical task: “Upgrade database to handle 10x traffic”
How to manage your backlog
- Break roadmap items into specific, actionable tasks
- Prioritize using your feature prioritization framework
- Keep it current - remove outdated items weekly
- Always know what the next 3-5 things to work on are
How They Connect
Here’s how it all flows together:
Mission (Why we exist) → Vision (What success looks like) → Strategy (How we’ll get there) → Roadmap (What we’ll build when) → Backlog (The actual work to do)
When someone asks “Should we build feature X?”, you check:
- Does it serve our mission?
- Does it move us toward our vision?
- Does it align with our strategy?
- Is it on our roadmap?
- Is it the highest priority item in our backlog?
If any answer is no, don’t build it.
Common Mistakes
Confusing mission and vision
If your mission and vision sound the same, one of them is wrong. This is super frequent. I have seen the two being used interchangeably. That’s wrong, I guess, but whatever.
The main point is, if you have both the difference should be clear. Otherwise it will be confusing.
Strategy as a to-do list
Strategy isn’t what you’ll do, it’s how you’ll decide what to do.
“We will build feature A, then feature B, then feature C.” isn’t a strategy: it’s a todo list.
A strategy reads something like: “We will prioritize user retention over user acquisition: our research shows that retained users generate twice more revenue.” Now when someone suggests an acquisition feature, you know how to think about it.
Roadmaps that never change
If your roadmap looks the same after 6 months, you’re not learning fast enough. Now, I’m not suggesting You randomly change your plan and move the post constantly. Just iterate quickly. Rather than being stuck forever in a journey that isn’t meaningful anymore, make smaller paths (3-6 months at most), then stop and reassess.
Backlogs that become junk drawers
If you haven’t touched a backlog item in 3 months, delete it. No, really, I mean it.
Backlogs have a tendency to become the place where good ideas go to die. Someone suggests “wouldn’t it be cool if we could…” and it gets added to the backlog where it sits forever, creating the illusion that you’ll get to it someday.
You won’t. And that’s fine.
A huge backlog doesn’t make you look prepared - it makes you look indecisive. If you really thought that feature was important, you’d prioritize it. If you don’t prioritize it for months, you’re essentially saying it’s not important.
The cure is brutal simplicity: regular backlog grooming where you delete anything that hasn’t moved in 90 days. If it becomes important again later, it’ll come up again. Trust me, actually important things have a way of resurfacing.
Templates to Get Started
Mission
"We exist to [core purpose] so that [target audience] can [better outcome]."
Vision Template
"In [timeframe], [target audience] will [experience/outcome] because of the work we do."
Strategy Template
"We will achieve our vision by:
1. [First key principle]
2. [Second key principle]
3. [Third key principle]"
So, to recap:
- Your Mission is not your Vision
- Your Strategy is not your Roadmap
- Your Roadmap is not your Backlog.
Each serves a different purpose, and you need all five to build something meaningful.
Any questions?