# Product roadmap planning when support work eats capacity

> Product roadmap planning breaks down when teams ignore onboarding fixes, support work, and billing issues that quietly consume feature time.

## Why the roadmap keeps slipping

A roadmap shows the work everyone can see: a feature, a redesign, a release date. It usually does not show the smaller jobs that land on the team every day. Onboarding fixes, support issues, billing corrections, account changes, and quick internal tools sit outside the plan even when they take a large share of the week.

That gap makes the schedule look cleaner than reality. A founder sees two open weeks before a release and assumes the team has two full weeks to build. In practice, those days break apart fast. One customer cannot finish setup. Another gets charged twice. Support needs engineering help to sort out an account problem. The roadmap still says the feature is