Strategy is not what you plan; it is what you actually ship.
Editorial insight
If you are anything like us, your 2026 is not starting with a blank page.
There are already documents, roadmaps, OKRs, ideas parked “for when we finally have time”. On paper, the year looks full, right?
However, at some point, we realised that this fullness was hiding a simple question we were not answering clearly: what do we actually want to ship and be proud of by the end of the year?
We definitely cannot do everything (and sometimes we think we can, and will, conquer the world). There are only a few things that would really move the needle for the people who use the products we help build.
Once we noticed that, the conversation changed. Instead of adding more initiatives to the list, we started asking a different question in the product conversations we are part of: which three or four product bets would make 2026 feel honest and meaningful if they shipped them well. The kind of bets they would still stand behind if things became messy, noisy or slower than expected.
January is often sold as a time to plan more. We think it is a better moment to choose less. To move from “everything is important” to “these are the few things we are really willing to fight for and deliver, in front of real users.”
This edition comes from that shift. It is not about having a perfect plan for 2026. It is about turning your goals into a small set of product bets your team truly believes in, and letting everything else find its place around them.
Value piece
From plans to product bets you can stand behind
Every January, product teams do a similar dance. The plans look ambitious, the roadmaps are full, and almost every line sounds important. Yet somewhere between the kickoff and the end of Q2, reality shows up. Priorities shift, energy spreads too thin, and the year becomes a blur of activity that is hard to connect back to what actually shipped.
The problem is not planning. It is treating every idea, initiative, or request as if it had the same weight. When everything is a priority, nothing is. You end up with a long list of “must-do” items and a very short list of things the team actually feels responsible for putting in front of users.
When we say product bets here, we are not talking about blind gambles, just to be clear from the start. Our UX team would never let us get away with that.
A bet is a conscious commitment to a small number of initiatives, backed by what you already know and honest about what you still do not know. It is a way of saying: out of everything we could do, these are the few moves we are willing to organise our focus, time, and trade-offs around.
Strong teams make that choice explicit. Instead of starting the year with a long roadmap, they start with a short list of product bets. Each one has a clear user, a clear outcome, and a clear reason to exist. If you ask anyone on the team what they are trying to make true this year, they can answer in one or two sentences, not by sending you a slide deck.
One simple way to get there is to use a basic template. For each major initiative on your list, try to write it like this:
Our bet is that if we do X for Y users, it will improve Z by N in T time.
On the projects our team is involved in, this is often where vague ideas either become real commitments or quietly move to the background.
If you cannot fill this in without hand-waving, it is probably not a real bet yet. It is still an idea, or a hope. That does not mean it is bad. It just means you should not treat it as one of the few things that define your 2026.
From what we see in the teams we work with, the real shift happens when they move from twenty loose initiatives to three to five real product commitments written in plain language. Suddenly, it becomes easier to say no. Easier to decide what belongs on the roadmap and what stays on the backlog for now. Easier to have honest conversations with stakeholders, because there is a visible list of what the team is actually protecting.
If you only do one thing after reading this, do this:
Pick three to five initiatives from your 2026 list that feel the most important.
Rewrite each one as a product bet using the template above.
Anything you cannot write this way is not a core bet yet. Treat it as an idea, not as part of the plan that should define your year.
2026 will not be defined by every task you touch. It will be defined by a handful of product bets you are willing to stand behind, even when things get messy.
The work now is to decide which ones deserve that kind of commitment.
Untile Picks & Trends Radar
Here are a few things our team shared lately that we think are worth your time:
If you want to go deeper into how we connect business goals with real product decisions, this article breaks down how we approach product development strategy in practice.
If you lead a team, this piece is a great way to review 2025 and be more intentional about 2026. Thirty-five questions that are uncomfortable in a good way.
Choosing your product bets is one thing. Getting stakeholders to actually care about them is another. This webinar on storytelling that sparks change is a great watch if you want your insights and recommendations to really influence the roadmap.
If planning sessions are starting to pile up, here’s a tiny comic break about what “high priority” sometimes looks like in real life.
🧭 Trend we are watching
More product teams are replacing giant feature roadmaps with a short list of product bets they can actually explain in one sentence.
If you spot a good example out in the wild, feel free to reply and send it our way. We love seeing how others do this.
Use Cases & Case Studies
How one product bet reshaped an everyday benefits experience
When Ticket looked at its digital ecosystem, there were many potential initiatives on the table. But one product clearly carried most of the weight for everyday users: MyTicket, an app used by over 100,000 people to access their daily benefits.
Instead of spreading effort across multiple projects, the team made a conscious product bet: focus on turning MyTicket into a faster, more reliable, and more user-centric way to manage benefits.
That meant concentrating on the things people do all the time inside the app:
Making login simple and secure
Reducing friction in everyday actions like checking the balance and making payments
Improving the overall experience without breaking existing infrastructure
By treating MyTicket as a core bet rather than “just another app”, Ticket could align teams around one clear digital experience that supports their roadmap for the next few years.
Want to see how that looked in practice for an app used by over 100,000 people?
📝 A question for your own roadmap
If you are looking at your own product lineup for 2026, a useful starting point is this question: If we could only invest deeply in one product experience this year, which one would it be, and why?
Inside Untile
A few things are happening on our side that might be relevant for your 2026 thinking:
From local roots to global signals: We wrote a short recap on what Viana Tech Day and Web Summit told us about decentralisation, market trends and what they mean for the teams we work with. Check the recap here.
From the team
“When a client shows us a long roadmap, my first question is always the same. Which three things here would make the year worth it if everything else slipped.”
Till next month!
That is a wrap for this edition, but the conversation does not have to stop here.
If this edition made you look at your 2026 roadmap and realise you have a lot of initiatives and only a few real bets, you are not alone. Many of the teams we work with are in the same place right now.
You can always hit reply and share the three initiatives you are most unsure about. Sometimes just writing them down already creates clarity.
And if you prefer to think it through live, we keep time aside for short working sessions where we look at your 2026 plans together and help turn them into a small set of product bets your team can stand behind.
Maybe this is your sign to put a few things on the right path for this next chapter.