Developer path

Week 4: Defend the roadmap

Check dependencies, map stakeholders, defend your choices, and learn to steer AI agents with agent-ready epics.

Outcome: your roadmap survives a review, and your first epic is ready for AI agents to build.

Part 1: Fix and defend

After the Week 3 review, fix your epics. Then check:

  • Dependencies. Which epic must finish before another can start? Mark it.
  • Risks. List the top five and give each an owner.
  • Out of scope. Is every “no” written down?

Prepare a 10-minute roadmap presentation: the picture, the order, the risks, and what you chose not to build.

Part 2: Stakeholders

A stakeholder is a person or group affected by your product or able to affect it.

Stakeholder What they want How you keep them informed
Customers The product works and is fair Interviews, support, release notes
Partners (for example cafés) Easy operation, fair terms Monthly call, shared status page
Sponsor or mentor Honest progress Weekly note
Legal or privacy adviser Rules are followed Policy pages, review before launch
Builders (people and agents) Clear work Agent-ready epics

Write your own table for your product. Add the main worry of each group.

Part 3: AI agents in practice

An AI agent here is an AI coding assistant that reads your project and builds issues. Agents are strong at tasks that are:

  1. Scoped. Clear start and end.
  2. Verifiable. A test or a screen shows if it is done.
  3. In one repo.
  4. Short. One session, one merge request.

The agent loop

  1. Read the plan.
  2. Pick the next issue that is ready and not blocked.
  3. Read the repo’s instruction file.
  4. Build on a branch and commit often.
  5. Open a merge request that says Closes #N.
  6. Watch the pipeline. If red, fix forward.
  7. A human reviews and merges.
  8. Update the issue and the epic.

Agent-ready epics

An epic is agent-ready when an agent can work from it without guessing. It states:

  1. Goal. The result in one or two sentences.
  2. Repos. Every repo involved, marked exists or planned.
  3. Interfaces. Names of URLs, fields, environments and secrets. Names only. Never secret values.
  4. Acceptance. Checkboxes a person can test.
  5. Order. What comes first.
  6. Owner. The human who answers questions.

Vague:

Title: Welcome emails
We need a good welcome flow. Make it nice and secure.

Agent-ready:

Title: New members get a welcome email within 5 minutes
Goal: After sign-up a member receives a welcome email with
  how to find a partner cafe. The member appears in the CRM.
Repos: trailmug-app (exists), trailmug-flow-welcome (planned),
  trailmug-crm (planned)
Interfaces: event "member.created" with fields email, name, city.
  Secret names: trailmug-mail-api-key. Environments: dev, staging, prod.
Acceptance:
  - [ ] Email arrives within 5 minutes of sign-up
  - [ ] Member appears in the CRM within 1 minute
  - [ ] Unsubscribe link works
Order: CRM table, then workflow, then the app event
Out of scope: loyalty points, push notifications
Owner: Maya (human). Decisions are logged in the epic comments.

The decision log

When an agent asks a question, answer it in the epic comments. Write the date, the question, the answer and your name. Answer where the question was asked, never in a private chat. The next session cannot see private chats.

What agents never do

Agents never edit the goal of an epic. They comment, propose a change with a reason, or flag the issue as blocked. You decide.

Failure cases without a human owner

  • Drift. An agent adds a chat widget and a blog. The page no longer matches the plan.
  • Duplicate repos. Two agents create two repos for the same job.
  • Mismatched interfaces. One side sends mail, the other expects email. Both pass their tests. Production fails.
  • Orphan work. Issues in six repos and no epic. The roadmap shows nothing.
  • The empty epic. An AI wrote it. It reads well. Nobody owns it. Agents build it faithfully. The result is a polished mistake.

Part 4: A weekly rhythm

Use the weekly cadence from now on.

Exercises

  1. Fix your roadmap after review. Write what changed and why.
  2. Write the stakeholder table.
  3. Rewrite your first epic until it is agent-ready.
  4. Give an agent one milestone you wrote. Review every line it produces. Write your disclosure note.
  5. Present the roadmap in 10 minutes.

Final review

Present to a panel or coach. They ask: is it your thinking, does it cover the whole product, can agents build from it?

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