Before the board approves a roadmap cut, war-game the cut list. Agree the criteria before anyone sees names, then score every item on forward cost, revenue exposure, strategic fit, and commitments already made. Count savings by team, ignore money already spent, and decide how each customer promise is handled. Paste the roadmap with costs, the draft cut list, linked revenue, and any commitments into one request. Instruct Pingpong to flag savings that will not materialize, items kept because of past spending, cuts that break a promise nobody has planned for, and pipeline that depends on something being cut. Review your written answers in a second round.
This page is for chief executives and product and finance leaders preparing a portfolio cut that the board will approve or hear about. For a single project or feature, see before you kill the project. Executive starting points live under Pingpong for executives.
One line per item
- Forward cost: what it takes to finish and run, from today. Spending to date stays off the line.
- Revenue exposure: existing customers who rely on it, deals in the pipeline that need it, and renewals that mention it.
- Strategic fit: whether it serves the strategy the board approved.
- Commitments: contract terms, promises made in sales calls, and anything shown publicly with a date.
- Real savings: what disappears from the budget, at the team level, if the item stops.
Sunk cost talks loudest in the room
The hardest item to cut is usually the one closest to finished. A team has spent eighteen months on it, its sponsor is in the meeting, and stopping feels like admitting waste. The money is gone either way. The only question is whether the next dollar is better spent here or somewhere else. It helps to build the list so past spending never appears on it. Directors notice when an expensive, late project survives a cut while cheaper, newer bets do not, and they will ask why.
A worked example
This example is illustrative and does not describe a customer. The board of a 600-person software company asks for a 20 percent cut in research and development spend, about $12 million a year, to extend runway. The roadmap has 34 initiatives. The product leader's draft cuts nine of them, worth $12.4 million on paper.
The chief executive pastes the roadmap, the draft list, linked revenue, the pipeline report, and last spring's customer conference slides.
A useful pass finds that two of the nine cut items appear in contracts with large customers, worth $3.1 million in combined annual revenue, with delivery dates. A third, data residency, is required by $5 million of European pipeline. Savings were counted per initiative, but four of the cut items shared a platform team whose engineers would simply move to other work, so real savings are closer to $8.9 million. One item survived the cut with $4 million already spent, $6 million still to go, and no customer asking for it. Three cut items were shown on stage at the conference with release dates, and there is no plan for telling customers.
The revised list starts from written criteria and cuts 11 initiatives, with $12.1 million in savings counted team by team. The late, expensive item is cut. Data residency stays. One contractual item ships in reduced scope with the customer's agreement. For the other, the account leader renegotiates the delivery date, and counsel reviews the contract terms first. Customers who saw the conference roadmap hear from account teams before any public update.
Commitments already made
- In contracts: counsel reviews the terms. Then deliver in reduced scope, renegotiate, or accept the cost of the breach knowingly.
- In sales conversations: list them by account.
- In public: decide who tells which customers, and when, before anything is posted.
What the board needs
The criteria, the cut list with savings by team, revenue at risk with a figure, every commitment and how it will be handled, and what evidence would bring an item back. In the example, revenue at risk after revisions is about $1.2 million, and the board approves with that figure in front of it.
A request you can copy
Below are our roadmap with costs, the draft cut list, linked revenue and pipeline, and our commitments. Score each item on forward cost, revenue exposure, strategic fit, and commitments. Recalculate savings at the team level. Flag items kept mainly because of past spending. List every commitment a cut would break and suggest how to handle it. Stop there so we can answer in writing, then review our answers.
How Pingpong runs the review
The web review app sends your request through several models in order. Each later model receives the original request and every earlier answer, with instructions to assess the work so far. For the steps inside the app, see running your first review.
What a model can't review
A model cannot weigh what a cut does to a team that believed in its project, or how a long-standing customer will take the news. It can make sure the list is built on forward costs and that no promise is forgotten. The conversations that follow are yours.
When the decision goes to the board, see war-game a decision before the board meeting. More guides live under work decisions before you commit.