The Prioritization Crisis in SaaS R&D

When my team and I first created what we now call the Plan of Record (PoR) prioritization framework, we weren’t trying to invent a new framework for software-based businesses. We were just trying to solve problems that were causing real pain — for our teams, our customers, and the business as a whole.

We were facing a product and engineering organization overwhelmed by competing requirements. Inputs were flying in from every direction — customers, sales, executives, support, operations. Everyone wanted something, and it all felt urgent. In the midst of that noise, the team was struggling to deliver on the roadmap.

Meanwhile, existing customers were growing louder. Many had been promised new functionality multiple quarters earlier and were still waiting. The promises made to them didn’t match what the team could realistically deliver, and trust was beginning to erode.

Inside the organization, a culture of heroic behavior had taken root. Individual product managers or engineers would push themselves to extremes to save an account or unblock a team. Sometimes they succeeded. Often they did — but always at a cost. Other work would be left unfinished. Morale would drop. Burnout followed. Many of our heroes eventually left the company.

The downstream effects were everywhere. The customer-facing teams had no confidence in the roadmap they were presenting. They didn’t believe what was in it, and they couldn’t explain the trade-offs behind it. And at the top of the company, executive leadership — including the CEO — lacked visibility and control over how technical resources were being deployed. They couldn’t make sound business decisions because they didn’t know what was real and what was wishful thinking.

That’s where the PoR process began: not as a framework, but as a response to dysfunction.

Over time, we built it into something more structured. It became a tool we could use to make better business decisions, align resources, and serve customers more effectively. And it worked. We saw measurable improvement in both outcomes and morale.

That experience led me to a broader realization: the challenges we faced weren’t unique. The chaos, misalignment, burnout, and missed commitments were symptoms of something deeper — the way humans work together under pressure, especially when resources are constrained. These challenges are particularly acute for software-as-a-service (“SaaS”) businesses, because so much of the R&D work to support existing customers and infrastructure isn’t visible to the business leaders.

I’ve since implemented the PoR prioritization process three times over six years, in three different SaaS companies. Each time, I found that the same patterns appeared — and that the PoR process helped bring order, clarity, and forward momentum.

Up Next: In the next post, I’ll introduce the PoR framework itself: what it is, how it works, and what it’s designed to fix.