Product People Improved Roadmap Visibility and Enabled Audit-Ready R&D Cost Capitalization for a B2B SaaS Communication Software Provider

The Client: B2B SaaS Communication Software Provider

Our client, a B2B SaaS company providing employee communication software, serves enterprise customers globally and operates with 30+ product teams and a large, distributed R&D organization.

With rapid growth and 30+ product teams, the client was looking to further operationalize product operations—creating a more consistent roadmap approach, improving portfolio visibility, and strengthening how product execution connects to financial and strategic outcomes.

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The Mission: Product Operations Lead

Product People joined the client to establish a Product Operations foundation. The mission focused on improving roadmap visibility and enabling financial accountability through R&D cost capitalization, while reducing operational overhead for product teams.

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Our Main Quest: Building Product Ops Foundation

Launch: Onboarded Very Fast

Improved time-to-impact by rapidly mapping workflows and friction points across Product, Engineering, Finance, and adjacent functions, then prioritizing the highest-leverage foundations with an 80/20 mindset.

Explore and Conquer: Connecting Strategy to Execution

Created predictable delivery and audit-ready accountability by connecting strategic planning to day-to-day execution. The client had an opportunity to standardize roadmap practices and work categorization across teams to improve portfolio visibility, surface dependencies earlier, and move R&D capitalization toward more consistent, workflow-based reporting.

By consolidating planning into a live Jira-based roadmap (with alignment checks) and embedding R&D cost tracking into existing workflows, Product Ops improved leadership visibility, reduced manual prep, and strengthened financial tracking without adding unnecessary overhead.

Initiative 1 – Consolidated Product Roadmap as a Single Source of Truth

Problem:

Roadmap planning lived across multiple formats (e.g., Excel files and slide decks), requiring manual coordination across 30+ product teams. Leadership visibility into what was in flight was limited, dependencies often surfaced late, and roadmap preparation consumed 40+ hours per quarter (estimated). The client wanted a more consistent mechanism to validate alignment to strategy, capacity, and dependencies before work entered delivery—reducing late-stage changes and speeding up decisions.

What we did:

• Reduced roadmap preparation effort by and estimated 40+ hours per quarter by consolidating all active and future initiatives into a single, live Jira-based roadmap
• Increased leadership visibility and earlier dependency detection by standardizing initiative structures, workflows, and ownership across teams
• Cut late-stage rework by up to 30% (estimated) by embedding alignment checks at key stages to validate strategic relevance, cross-team dependencies, and capacity management
• Improved portfolio reporting reliability by automating portfolio-level roadmap views and reporting for leadership

Initiative 2 – R&D Cost Capitalization and Audit-Ready Tracking

Problem:

The client wanted a more reliable way to distinguish Research vs Development work and to track development costs in a way that supported R&D capitalization. This created an opportunity to reduce an estimated 30–50% higher R&D expense impact (estimated), capture capitalization opportunities more consistently, and strengthen audit readiness by moving away from manual, fragmented reporting.

What we did:

• Improved visibility into development spend (estimated 30–50%) by introducing standardized work categorization aligned to IAS 38 requirements
• This approach was validated with external auditors (including leading firms such as PwC and KPMG) to support audit-ready capitalization processes
• Enabled audit-ready data flows by implementing Jira-based tracking to clearly distinguish Research and Development activities
• Reduced manual reconciliation and financial risk by integrating live dashboards for team- and portfolio-level R&D cost visibility
• Made compliance the default by embedding financial checkpoints into existing workflows

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Mini-Missions: Our Side Quests

• Supported onboarding a full-time Director of Product Operations to ensure long-term ownership of the new operating model
• Quarterly Roadmap Process: Reduced roadmap deck creation time by ~50% quarter-over-quarter by generating views directly from Jira
• Cross-Functional Alignment: Strengthened collaboration between Product, Engineering, and Finance to reduce duplicated effort and blind spots
• Ways of Working Enablement: Rolled out training and documentation to support adoption of new workflows across product teams
• Data-Driven Collaboration: Delivered dashboards supporting transparency and accountability across the product organization

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Mission Achievements: Delivered Outcomes

💡 Portfolio Visibility at Scale: Established a single, live roadmap across 30+ product teams to provide real-time strategic oversight and enable earlier detection of cross-team dependencies.

💡 Audit-Ready Financial Accountability: Enabled R&D cost capitalization tracking and improved visibility into development spend by 30–50%, reducing financial risk and manual reporting effort.

💡 Reduced Waste & Increased Predictability: Embedded alignment checks into roadmap workflows to reduce late-stage rework by up to 30% and increase confidence in roadmap commitments.