Product HQ

Product HQ is where your product work lives alongside the strategy that drives it. Each product carries its own stage, strategy, backlog, evidence and shipping history — and connects back to the Rock it serves, so roadmap decisions stay tied to company priorities.

Track each product

Every product has a stage (where it is in its life) and a short strategy: who it's for, the problem it solves, and how you'll know it's working. Keep this current — it's the frame every backlog and roadmap decision is judged against. Where a product is driving a quarterly priority, link it to that Rock so the connection is explicit.

Prioritise the backlog with RICE

The backlog holds the things you might build, organised into now / next / later. Aretê scores each item with RICE so priority is a number, not a hunch. For each item, estimate:

• Reach — how many users or how often it's hit.
• Impact — how much it moves the needle for them.
• Confidence — how sure you are in those estimates.
• Effort — the cost to build it.

Aretê computes the RICE score and sorts the backlog best-first, so the highest- leverage work rises to the top on its own.

Capture customer insights

The insights log is your record of what customers actually told you — real quotes, how severe the pain was, and whether you heard a genuine buying signal. Keep it in their words, not your interpretation. Insights are the evidence that keeps the backlog honest and stops "wouldn't it be cool if" from setting the roadmap.

Test hypotheses

Big bets start as hypotheses on a validation board: a clear statement of what you believe, moved along as evidence comes in. Pair each hypothesis with the insight or result that supports or kills it, so you're building on what you've learned rather than on what you hoped.

Record what you ship

When something goes out, log it as a release with a note on the validated learning — what actually happened when real users met it. Over time this becomes an honest history of what worked, so the team compounds its knowledge instead of relearning the same lessons.

How it fits together

The loop is the point: an insight sharpens a hypothesis, a validated hypothesis earns a high-RICE backlog item, shipping it produces a release and fresh learning — and because each product links to its Rock, all of it stays anchored to the priorities you set for the quarter.