Written from operating and development evidence. Adapt the principles to the risk, authority and scale of your own system.
Choose one buyer and one outcome
Describe who pays, what recurring problem they have and what completed result the product delivers. Remove features that do not support that path.
Include the operator
User signup is only one side. Admin review, support, billing, exceptions, data correction and communication must work well enough for a small number of real customers.
Protect the fundamentals
Authentication, access control, backups, logging and payment boundaries should be appropriate from the first paid release even when the feature set is small.
Define evidence for version two
Track activation, completion, support requests, manual work and retention signals. Roadmap priority should follow repeated evidence rather than the loudest single request.
Apply this to a real system.
Bring the context and we will identify the useful first decision.
Discuss the related system