Two Months Per Quarter Spent Recreating Slides: What Was Actually Broken

A Cycle Consumed by Slides

Ocado had 350 product managers and 3,000 developers working on its products.

Each planning cycle, two of every three months went to recreating roadmap slides from scratch.

That was the visible symptom. The deeper problem was a planning system that did not preserve knowledge or invite outside input.

The scale matters because repeated administrative work can consume a large organization, even when R&D receives major investment.

Where the Cycle Went

Picture the planning cycle as three months: Month 1, Month 2, and Month 3.

At Ocado, two months went to rebuilding roadmap slides. That left one month for every other activity in the cycle.

Recreating a slide adds no new decision by itself. It repeats work that already existed in some form.

The key signal is the share of time consumed: most of the cycle produced replacement documents.

Multiplied Across Thousands

The waste did not sit with one team.

At Ocado, headcount included 350 people working as product managers and 3,000 people working as developers.

The planning process touched an organization of thousands. Repeated work at this scale becomes an organizational problem, rather than one person's inefficient habit.

The important signal is repetition multiplied by reach.

The Blank-Start Loop

Every cycle, roadmap slides were built from scratch.

There was no shared documentation to carry the roadmap forward as one current record.

The pattern therefore repeated: a new cycle began, teams started blank, slides were rebuilt, and the next cycle began the same way.

Ask a practical question: where does our roadmap live between cycles, and can the next cycle update it rather than rebuild it?

Two Missing Routes

The second gap was no external input mechanism.

People outside product teams lacked a set route for contributing to the roadmap.

Together, the gaps closed roadmaps in different directions. There was no shared record carrying knowledge forward, and no set route bringing outside input in.

Faster slide-making would fix neither gap.

Money Did Not Fix It

Ocado spent hundreds of millions on R&D every year.

Yet major investment did not prevent teams from spending two of every three planning months recreating slides.

Budget and process quality are different signals. A large budget can coexist with basic gaps in shared documentation and input.

When reviewing planning, ask where knowledge lives and how input enters. Spending alone does not answer either question.

Check Your Own Process

You can check any team for the same pattern.

Ask three questions. Do we rebuild planning documents each cycle? Is there one shared, current record? Can people outside the team add input through a set route?

If the answers are yes, no, and no, the visible slide problem points to two deeper gaps: missing continuity and missing input.

Fix those gaps first. Faster slide production treats the symptom and leaves the pattern intact.

At Ocado, recreating roadmap slides from scratch consumed _____ of each three-month planning cycle.

• two months
• one month

Answer: two months

Two of every three months went to rebuilding slides, leaving only one month for every other planning activity. Most of the cycle produced replacement documents rather than new decisions.

Ocado's slide problem hid two gaps. With no _____, knowledge was not carried forward between cycles. With no _____ mechanism, people outside product teams had no route to contribute.

Answer: Ocado's slide problem hid two gaps. With no shared documentation, knowledge was not carried forward between cycles. With no external input mechanism, people outside product teams had no route to contribute.

Shared documentation provides continuity: one current record that each cycle updates rather than rebuilds. An external input mechanism provides a set route for outsiders to contribute. Together, their absence closed the roadmap in both directions.

A leader at a company like Ocado proposes buying a tool that makes roadmap slides twice as fast. Why would this fail to fix the underlying problem?

• Teams would still start blank each cycle, and outsiders would still lack a route to contribute
• Developers, not product managers, were the ones spending time rebuilding the slides
• The real issue was underinvestment in R&D, which a slide tool cannot address
• Faster slides would shorten the cycle, so planning would happen more often

Answer: Teams would still start blank each cycle, and outsiders would still lack a route to contribute

Faster slide-making treats the visible symptom. The deeper gaps are the lack of a shared, current record that carries the roadmap forward and the lack of a set route for outside input. A faster tool leaves both gaps, and the blank-start loop, intact.