Industry
Headquarters
Baltimore, MD
Founded
2010
Company Size
Key Markets
1M+ users globally
Growth Stage
ARR $8M by 2023
Website
Overview
As TeamGantt grew, so did demand. Feature requests increased across different parts of the product. New ideas came in from users, support, and internal teams.
The risk was clear: expansion without structure.
The goal was not to build more. It was to build in the right direction.
Highlights
Established timeline as the central product surface
Reduced feature drift and unnecessary complexity
Improved focus across roadmap decisions
Strengthened core planning experience at scale
Understanding the Problem
The product was at risk of losing focus. More features meant more surface area — and more surface area meant more complexity.
Increasing feature requests across the product
Pressure to expand the roadmap quickly
Risk of diluting the core value
Growing complexity for users managing schedules
The danger was not missing features. It was drifting away from what made the product work.
Strategic approach
The approach was to anchor the product around its strongest behavior.
Not every request moves the product forward.
Reinforcing the core planning model
I reviewed how teams actually used the product. The pattern was consistent: the timeline was the center of planning. Everything else supported it.
Product direction shifted to strengthen that surface. Work focused on improving timeline interactions, clarity, and usability.
Features that reinforced visual planning were prioritized. Requests that added complexity without strengthening the core workflow were challenged or deferred.
This created a filter for decision making: if it did not make the timeline better, it did not move forward.
Principle: Strong products grow by reinforcing the core workflow, not expanding away from it.
Key Initiatives
Timeline as the primary surface
The product had multiple areas competing for attention.
What I did
Identified the timeline as the central planning experience
Aligned product decisions around that surface
Focused design and engineering effort on improving it
What changed
The timeline became the primary way users interacted with the product
Planning felt more direct and cohesive
Less need to move between different parts of the system
Feature prioritization through workflow impact
Feature requests were increasing without a clear filter.
What I did
Evaluated requests based on impact to the core workflow
Prioritized improvements that strengthened planning clarity
Pushed back on features that introduced unnecessary complexity
What changed
The roadmap became more focused
Fewer features, but higher impact
The product stayed aligned with its core use case
Progressive feature introduction
Advanced features were overwhelming users early.
What I did
Sequenced feature exposure based on user progress
Introduced complexity only after the core workflow was understood
Used interaction to teach the system
What changed
Users adopted features in the right order
Understanding improved
The system felt approachable
Additional improvements
Reduced fragmentation across product surfaces
Strengthened consistency in interaction patterns
Aligned product decisions with real user behavior
Maintained simplicity as the product scaled
Cross-Functional Collaboration
Worked directly with founders and engineering to guide product direction.
Decisions were grounded in usage patterns, not assumptions.
Tradeoffs were explicit. The team aligned around a shared understanding of what mattered.
Financial Impact & Business Enablement
This work kept the product from drifting. Instead of expanding in multiple directions, it deepened in one.
Users could plan faster, with less friction, and without switching tools.
Improved retention through clearer core workflows
Reduced complexity-related churn
More efficient product development focus
Higher impact from fewer, better features
Takeaway
Direction is a constraint. Without it, products grow in ways that make them harder to use.
Role
Head of Product Design and Design Systems
Led product direction and UX strategy. Identified the core workflow, aligned roadmap decisions around it, and partnered with product and engineering to maintain focus as the product scaled.
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