6-Month Roadmap

GoTab Product Roadmap

"Keep selling at peak" + "Own venue-grade orchestration"

Outcomes-driven roadmap tied to competitive analysis findings and feature recommendations. Structured around measurable success criteria with clear dependencies.

Horizon: Feb 2026 - Jul 2026 (6 months)

Positioning Thesis

  • Turn reliability into a marketed product advantage

    GoTab's key risk is trust/reliability perception (VoC references unexpected outages + tablet-terminal comm/payment issues). "Resilience Center" directly addresses this with multi-device degraded selling + recovery tooling.

  • Double down on venue-grade, mobile-first commerce

    The competitive analysis flags GoTab's wedge as QR/online ordering + pre-auth tabs included and venue primitives like zones + dynamic routing. "Venue Orchestrator" productizes these into repeatable venue ops.

  • Pilot-to-scale with proof

    In 6 months, produce measurable improvements in offline resilience, peak-hour throughput, routing accuracy, and pickup flow—the buyer priorities most likely to shift competitive win-rate vs Toast/Square/Lightspeed.

6-Month Timeline

1
Feb 2026

De-risk Foundations

Validate UX + build foundations

  • [RC] Validate degraded-mode UX (banner + checklist) with 6-8 operators; prototype Recovery Console
  • [VO] Validate "Concepts + unified cart + pickup" flow (QR-first) with 2-3 venue design partners
  • [FND] Define offline queue + idempotency model; audit log schema; RBAC gates; baseline event taxonomy

Deliverables

UX prototypes (RC + VO)Architecture RFCsBaseline dashboards specPilot contracts/LOIs
2
Mar 2026

Resilience MVP → Pilot

Ship Resilience Center MVP; build Venue Alpha

  • [RC] Build MVP: degraded detection + banner/checklist; local-first order queue + idempotent sync; Recovery Console v1; terminal comm triage wizard v1
  • [VO] Build Alpha behind flags: Concept entity + menu mapping; order split + routing; Expo Board v1; QR unified cart prototype
  • [GTM] Pilot training: "offline drill" + shift-lead runbook; support taxonomy + on-call plan

Deliverables

RC MVP pilot release to 1 design partner (+ up to 3 locations)VO Alpha in stagingPilot enablement kit v1
3
Apr 2026

Pilot Expansion

Expand pilots + closed-loop learning

  • [RC] Expand pilot to full 6-10 locations; improve fallback payment flows; implement heartbeat/status API; add basic duplicate detection flags
  • [VO] Alpha → Pilot at 1 venue: Concepts + split routing + Expo Board + pickup codes + guest status page v1
  • [FND] Add routing ACK/visibility; performance harness for QR + expo; parity checks for menu/channel differences

Deliverables

RC pilot v2VO pilot v1 (1 venue)Dashboards v1Parity checker v1
4
May 2026

Beta Hardening

Trust + peak controls

  • [RC] Beta features: conflict handling; Post-Incident Report export; multi-location Health Dashboard (P1); in-product status surfacing
  • [VO] Beta to 2-3 venues: pickup flow improvements; manual + soft throttling; config validation tool v0
  • [GTM] Packaging + enablement: "Keep Selling" narrative + sales battlecards; support macros; pilot weekend playbooks

Deliverables

RC BetaVO Beta v1Training modules v1Internal launch readiness checklist
5
Jun 2026

Resilience GA

GA Resilience + scale venue mechanics

  • [RC] GA: harden reliability surfaces; offline drills module; incident bundle export (CS); expand to 30-50 locations; publish internal SLOs + weekly reliability readout
  • [VO] Beta expansion to 8-10 venues: automated throttling; allocation reporting export by concept; manager reroute action with audit log; config validation + test order tool v1
  • [FND] Expo tablet performance optimizations; KDS/printer routing load tests

Deliverables

RC GAVO Beta v2Allocation exportThrottle automationPerformance improvements
6
Jul 2026

Venue Orchestrator GA

GA Venue + "Venue Ops" package

  • [VO] GA: stabilize templates + guardrails; expand to 20+ venues; finalize "Venue Ops" package enablement; improve guest status/pickup UX
  • [RC] Continue rollout + optimization; embed reliability proof (case studies, status posture)
  • [GTM] Case studies + ROI calculator (labor minutes/order, throughput, error reduction) + competitive win-rate reporting

Deliverables

VO GAVenue templates/guardrailsCase study kitsROI dashboardExec scorecard

KPI Targets

Measurable outcomes tied to roadmap delivery.

MetricBaselineTarget
Incident Impact Minutes60/month≤20/month
Keep Selling Rate50%≥85%
Support Tickets (offline/outage)40/100 locations≤25/100 locations
Reconciliation Time45 min≤15 min
Routing Error Rate2.0%≤0.8%
Peak Throughput120 orders/hr135 orders/hr
Pickup Friction18%≤10%
Self-Serve Mix at Peak25%≥40%
QR Menu Load Time (p95)TBD (baseline M1)<1.5s
Kitchen Ticket Routing (p95)TBD (baseline M1)<500ms

Key Tradeoffs

Explicit decisions made to optimize for the stated outcomes.

  • 1

    Offline scope intentionally narrow (orders + routing first) to reduce conflict/PCI risk and ship safely

  • 2

    Venue MVP is QR-first—kiosk support deferred until unified cart + split routing is stable

  • 3

    Single merchant-of-record in V1—allocation reporting rather than complex multi-merchant settlement/payout automation

  • 4

    Throttling starts explainable (manual + soft) before automation to build operator trust

  • 5

    Early investment in instrumentation + parity checks to produce credible metrics for competitive differentiation

Feature Bets in This Roadmap

This roadmap incorporates the following recommended features from competitive analysis.

GoTab Resilience Center

Full PRD with requirements and rollout plan

Venue Orchestrator

Full PRD with requirements and rollout plan

Want the full artifact?

Email me to request a PDF of this complete 6-month roadmap with detailed milestones.

Request PDF

Explore Other Playbooks

See how I approach product strategy across different industries.

All Playbooks