Why teams ship only 3% of their 3-year roadmap (and what to do instead)

The truth about product strategy, and the loop that fixes it.

Every year, I see product teams do the same ritual. They lock themselves in meeting rooms, fill endless slides with market maps, strategic themes, dependency charts, and Gantt bars that stretch three years into the future.

And every year, the same thing happens:

• 97% of that plan never ships.
• 80% of the assumptions inside it turn out to be wrong.
• The roadmap becomes a museum of past optimism.

Now, it’s not because teams are lazy. It’s because the planning model itself is broken, and no one has recognised it.

Most product strategies still operate on a waterfall mindset. Linear, predictive and rigid. They assume the world will hold still long enough for the plan to be delivered. It won’t. It never does. And that’s why so many teams end up delivering a fraction of what they thought they would. But there is a better way.

The real reason long-range plans fail

We pretend uncertainty is risk, when in reality uncertainty is the environment.

Three-year plans assume:

• We know the customer well enough
• Market conditions will stay relatively stable
• Competitors won’t introduce game-changing moves
• Internal priorities won’t shift
• Teams won’t reorganise
• Tech won’t evolve dramatically

But in 2025-2026? AI alone invalidates those assumptions monthly, not annually. A static roadmap is a commitment to being wrong on purpose.

The antidote: short loops, fast learning, continuous evidence

The teams who actually ship meaningful progress don’t plan harder, they learn faster. That’s the philosophy behind the Build Loop: A cyclical system for turning uncertainty into insight, and insight into impact.

Each loop moves through four stages:

1. Frame - Identify the opportunity and define the learning question
2. Create - Prototype or build the smallest version that answers the question
3. Validate - Get real evidence from users, behaviours, or data
4. Learn - Feed what you discovered into the next loop

No wishful timelines. No 200-page “strategic plan.” Just small, strong cycles that build momentum, not illusions.

Loops beat long-term plans because reality always wins

Here’s what loops give you that Gantt charts don’t:

• Adaptability - When the environment changes, the loop changes.
• Evidence - Decisions come from signal, not guessing.
• Speed - You learn in weeks what used to take quarters.
• Compounding value - Each loop makes the next loop smarter.
• True alignment - Everyone rallies around learning, not delivery theatre.

Most teams try to predict the future. Great teams create a system that adapts as the future reveals itself.

The 3% problem isn’t a failure. It’s a symptom

It means the strategy was too rigid, the assumptions too untested, and the plan too detached from reality. The Build Loop isn’t a process layer. It’s a strategic shift, from betting big once, to betting small constantly. Instead of a three-year fantasy, you get a three-week truth.

If you want to ship more than 3%, stop planning more and start looping faster.

Teams don’t fail because they lack vision. They fail because they lack a system that keeps vision honest.

The Build Loop is that system.

Create → Learn → Adapt → Repeat.

Small loops. Strong signals. Faster truth. And that’s how modern product teams outpace those still clinging to roadmaps that expire the moment they’re printed.