Catch the Failures that Roadmaps Miss (#6)
The thing nobody saw but you
In The NeverEnding Story, there’s a moment when Atreyu finally snaps. He’s watched his friend Bastian — once cautious and thoughtful — descend into something unrecognizable. Caught up in perfecting Fantastica, Bastian loses sight of why he started. He pushes forward, unable — or unwilling — to see the cost of what he’s building.
"Think sensibly! You can’t go on like this! Haven’t you noticed that you’ve changed completely? You’re not yourself anymore."
But Bastian doesn’t hear it. By the time he realizes what he’s become, the damage is already done.
Every product team has a Bastian moment.
They start with the best intentions — building something clean, intuitive, powerful. But somewhere between sprint planning, backend integrations, and product release pressure, the goalpost quietly shifts. Chasing a better product quietly becomes building more product.
That’s how products ship with confusing workflows, misleading labels, or non-intuitive features. The team stopped asking some of the hard questions:
Does this feature make sense?
Is this workflow logical to the user?
Seeing What Others Don’t
Consider a platform that manages integrations with third-party solutions like Slack, Google Workspace, GitHub, or Salesforce.
In the platform settings, a user can delete each integration globally. This action removes the integration entirely. Additionally, within a workflow, a user can also click delete to remove the integration. However, deleting the integration within a workflow only disassociates the integration from the workflow.
The interface doesn’t distinguish between the two delete options.
As the technical writer drafts the user documentation, he realizes that the word delete sets different expectations in each part of the platform. He raises the observation with the team.
The engineers confirm that they followed the acceptance criteria.
The product manager reviews the observation. She pauses. Then she says, "Yeah… the designer isn’t here anymore. I honestly didn’t catch that the label stayed the same in both places. Hey team, let's change "delete" to "remove from workflow" within the workflow."
Nobody saw the UX issue until the technical writer tried to explain the workflow.
What You Don't Catch Will Cost You
This might seem small: a label, a flow. However, missed moments like this scale. Most products don’t fail because the tech didn’t work. They fail because no one caught the disconnect between what the product does and what the user thinks it is supposed to do.
That’s where the real cost lives:
Slower launches because last-minute fixes balloon
UX inconsistencies triggering emergency code patches
Lost users quietly cancelling SaaS subscriptions
Back in 2021, The Cost of Poor Software Quality in the US: A 2020 Report estimated that failed projects cost $260 billion, up 46% since 2018. And the cause? Not code. Not missed deadlines. In part, the lack of attention to quality.
This is why technical writers matter. Even though they don’t fix the product, technical writers can identify issues before the product is released and possible impact to customers.
The Blind Spot Only Writers See
Every PM wants a clean launch. Every engineer wants to avoid regressions and fire drills. Every support lead wants fewer support tickets.
You're the technical writer. You map the journey through the unknown. But this isn’t about grammar or flow — this is about meeting users where they are. It's about catching the fatal workflow moments others miss. These are the moments where users just... disappear.
Your leverage? You ask what no one else will:
What does this button really do?
What happens if the user screws this up?
Why does this word feel off?
Sure, you’re trying to create a seamless experience: saving the PM from shipping an inaccurate label, sparing Engineering an emergency release, and keeping Support out of the ticket flood. Most critically, you’re forcing everyone to remember what they set out to build.
You get to the right questions by diving deep into the product:
Walk the user flow cold: Does it work when you know nothing?
Challenge every label: Does “Delete” actually delete?
Run failure scenarios: What happens if the user clicks the wrong thing? Can the user recover?
No one sees this work. No project plan ever calls this out. No one cheers when the fire never starts. But in this role, your job isn’t just fixing typos. You're pulling the team back before it’s too late and helping them build the product they meant to ship, not the one they almost shipped by accident.
Be Atreyu
Atreyu never wanted Bastian’s power. He only wanted his friend back — grounded, clear-eyed, remembering why he started.
That’s what the best technical writers do. Before a product launches, they quietly, gently, pull the team back to reality.
Be Atreyu and confront the moment. Because no one remembers the fires you prevent.
But users will never forget when the product doesn't make sense.