Most software fails not because it was built badly, but because it was the wrong thing to build. We help leadership teams cut through politics, competing priorities, and shiny objects to define roadmaps that actually connect to business outcomes.
WHY STRATEGY FIRST
Every week your team spends building the wrong feature is a week your competitor spends building the right one. Product strategy isn't a phase you skip to save time — it's the phase that saves you from burning six months and six figures on software nobody uses. We've watched it happen. We've been hired to fix it. We'd rather help you avoid it entirely.
Your CEO wants growth. Your CTO wants stability. Your PM has a backlog with 200 items and no way to prioritize. Every meeting ends with "let's circle back" and nothing gets decided. Meanwhile, your dev team is building features that ship and sit unused.
Misalignment isn't just frustrating — it's expensive. Teams building in different directions. Stakeholders who can't agree on what "done" looks like. Launches that miss the market because nobody validated the assumptions. You don't have a technology problem. You have a clarity problem.
We don't start with wireframes. We start with the hard conversations — who are the users, what's the business model, what does success actually look like? We get every stakeholder in the room and force the decisions that unlock everything downstream.
A validated product roadmap tied to business outcomes. A realistic budget with no surprises. User personas based on real research, not assumptions. A clickable prototype your board can react to. And most importantly — a team that's finally rowing in the same direction.
Product strategy is a discipline, not a brainstorm. We bring structured frameworks, real research, and two decades of pattern-matching across industries to every engagement.
Market analysis, competitive audits, stakeholder interviews, and user research that separates signal from noise. We validate assumptions before they become expensive commitments.
Every engagement starts with evidence, not opinions. We conduct stakeholder interviews to surface hidden assumptions, run competitive audits to map the landscape, and perform user research to understand real behavior — not what people say they'll do, but what they actually do. The output is a clear-eyed view of where opportunity lives and where risk hides.
Story mapping, feature prioritization, phased rollout planning, and budget modeling. We turn a universe of possibilities into a sequenced plan your team can actually execute.
A roadmap without prioritization logic is just a wish list. We use story mapping, impact/effort scoring, and budget constraints to sequence initiatives into phases that deliver value early and build momentum. Every item on the roadmap ties back to a measurable business outcome — so when someone asks "why this and not that," you have an answer.
Wireframes, user flows, interactive prototypes, and usability testing. See and test your product before writing a single line of code — and before spending a dollar you can't get back.
We design the experience before you build it — wireframes to establish structure, user flows to map journeys, and clickable prototypes to test with real users. Usability testing catches the 80% of UX issues that no amount of internal review will surface. You'll invest in what works, not what you hope works.
Fixed-scope engagements designed to deliver clarity fast. No long-term commitment required.
“We have a ton of ideas but no way to prioritize them. Every stakeholder has a different opinion, and we keep going in circles.”
In 2–3 focused weeks, we cut through the noise and deliver a phased product roadmap tied to real business goals, technical constraints, and budget guardrails. You walk away with a plan your whole team can align behind.
“I have a concept but I need to validate it with real users before I commit the budget to build it.”
Go from rough concept to clickable, testable prototype in 2–4 weeks. We research your users, map the experience, design the interface, and put it in front of real people — so you invest in what works, not what you hope works.
STRATEGIC PAUSE
Strategy isn't a phase before building — it's the discipline of knowing what not to build. These are the principles that guide every engagement.
The most dangerous force in product development isn't indecision — it's unchallenged momentum. A stakeholder said it. A competitor shipped it. A board member wants it. So now it's in the roadmap. But nobody stopped to ask: does this actually move the business forward, or does it just feel productive? We challenge everything. Not to be difficult, but because building the wrong thing confidently is worse than building nothing at all.
You don't need everyone to agree. You need everyone to understand what you're optimizing for and commit to the direction. Consensus is slow, political, and dilutes the vision. Alignment is fast and strategic. We force the hard conversations early — what's the business model, who's the user, what does success actually look like in 12 months? Once the destination is clear, the roadmap becomes obvious.
"Build everything" is not a strategy. Neither is "let's see what the market wants." Strategy is the art of intentional constraint — deciding what you won't build so you can be exceptional at what you do. We help you draw boundaries: budget, timeline, technical feasibility, competitive positioning. Those constraints don't limit you — they clarify where to concentrate force.
A roadmap isn't a wishlist with dates. It's a forcing function that makes prioritization decisions visible. When everything is "high priority," nothing is. When there's no sequencing logic, every feature fight becomes political. We build roadmaps that tie every initiative to measurable outcomes and map them to budget reality. The result: a plan your team can defend, your board can understand, and your engineers can actually execute.
Starting Smart: How a Startup Balanced Innovation and Budget. Syntropi is a startup in the field of AI and data collection, with a mission to improve data cleanliness, consistency, and privacy for generative AI models.
Scaling Tax Filings: Using Azure Functions to Improve Payroll Tax Services for Kenton County. Building a self-service portal for payroll companies to file on behalf of hundreds of clients at once.
Cap Patrol partnered with Seven Hills Technology to rebuild and scale its platform for maintaining golf handicap integrity through automated score auditing and real-time data syncing. The result is a stable, modern system that protects fair play, improves user engagement, and unlocks over $1M in new annual revenue potential.
Empowering Civic Engagement: Transforming Elgin's Digital Landscape for Seamless Citizen Interaction. Building an "all in one" mobile and web platform for over 110,000 residents.
ClearPoint Federal Bank & Trust partnered with Seven Hills Technology to modernize their legacy .NET platform, migrating to .NET 8 and EF Core without disrupting operations. The upgrade improved performance, reduced costs, and delivered a future-ready infrastructure — all under budget.
Creating easily scalable translations with Azure AI. The client operates an extensive inventory management system requiring multilingual capabilities to support their global user base with over 1.2 million products.
The High Stakes of Software Development According to Boston Consulting Group (BCG) , nearly half of tech programs (49%) exceed their budgets by at least 31%, with some overshooting by up to 100%. The...
By Ryan Hardy, Jr. Account Lead Six years ago, when I first started as a software developer co-op at Seven Hills Technology, I didn’t truly understand what tech debt was. I’d never seen it, felt it, o...
Most engagements fall between $15,000 and $50,000. A Roadmap Sprint sits at the lower end; a comprehensive Design Sprint with user testing at the upper end.
We scope every engagement to the complexity of your situation — not to a standard menu. The variables are number of stakeholders, depth of research required, and whether we're designing a prototype or just a roadmap. We'll give you an honest number before we start, and it won't change unless you change the scope.
Two to six weeks. The biggest variable is stakeholder availability, not our process.
A focused Roadmap Sprint with aligned stakeholders can wrap in two to three weeks. A full Design Sprint with user research and usability testing takes four to six. The work moves fast — what slows things down is waiting for calendars. We'll build a realistic timeline together before kicking off.
No. Everything we produce is yours — roadmaps, prototypes, research, documentation. No lock-in.
About 80% of our strategy clients do choose to build with us, not because they're locked in, but because the context transfer is invaluable. Your strategy team becomes your build team — no re-explaining, no lost nuance. But if you have an internal team or another partner, our deliverables are designed to hand off cleanly.
At minimum: someone who owns the business vision and someone who owns the technical reality. Ideally three to six stakeholders.
We need decision-makers, not delegates. The person who can say "yes, that's the direction" and the person who can say "yes, that's technically feasible." Sending proxies slows everything down. Three to six stakeholders is the sweet spot — enough perspectives to be thorough, few enough to actually make decisions.
Let's have a conversation about what you're trying to build and whether it's worth building. No pitch. No pressure. Just honest strategic thinking. And when you're ready to build — we'll already be up to speed.
