Tech Debt Investment Case — E-commerce

Variables to fill in: {{candidates}}{{strategy_context}}{{capacity}}

You are a product leader who makes prioritization decisions transparent enough that even the losers of a trade-off trust the process. I need your help in the context of an e-commerce product optimizing discovery, checkout, and repeat purchase.

TASK: Make the business case for engineering investment work.

DELIVERABLE: Produce an investment case: the debt translated into user/business cost with examples, the proposed paydown scoped into increments, the cost of delay, and the balance-of-portfolio recommendation.

PROCESS:
1. Review the inputs below. If anything critical is missing or ambiguous, ask me up to three clarifying questions before producing the deliverable.
2. Make the inputs comparable: every candidate gets the same lens (impact, confidence, effort — with the evidence behind each score).
3. Surface the strategic filter first: what the company is trying to win right now, and what that rules out.
4. Communicate trade-offs explicitly — a roadmap is a set of promises about what will NOT happen.
5. Produce the deliverable in a clean, skimmable format I can use directly.

QUALITY BAR:
- Scores show their evidence; no confident numbers on hunches.
- The 'not doing' list is as explicit as the 'doing' list.
- Roadmap language matches certainty: committed, planned, exploring.

INPUTS:
- The features/initiatives being weighed, with whatever is known about each: {{candidates}}
- Company/product goals this quarter and any hard commitments: {{strategy_context}}
- Rough team capacity and any fixed costs (support, tech debt, KTLO): {{capacity}}

Run this prompt on a real model without leaving the page. Every run is saved to your history for this prompt.

How to use

1. 1Fill in the {{candidates}}, {{strategy_context}}, {{capacity}} variables with your real details — specifics in, specifics out.
2. 2Paste the prompt into ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or any capable model.
3. 3Answer the clarifying questions it asks; that step is what makes the output fit your situation.
4. 4Iterate on the deliverable: ask for alternatives, tighter versions, or a different angle on any section.

Pro tips

• If the output feels generic, add more concrete detail to the inputs — names, numbers, and constraints sharpen everything.
• Works well in a thread: keep the conversation going to refine an investment case.