The situation

Halden processes B2B payments for around 1,400 European logistics firms. In March 2025 their CPO left with two weeks' notice, two weeks before the Series B board meeting. The roadmap had 41 open items, five teams and no shared definition of done.

The CEO, Maya Okafor, needed three things: a credible plan for the board, a team that kept shipping, and a permanent product leader within the quarter.

What I did

In week one I interviewed all 23 people in product and engineering and 9 customers. Every roadmap item went into one spreadsheet with an owner, a cost estimate and the customer problem it solved. Only 6 could name a customer problem with evidence.

We cut the other 35. Some were good ideas; none were this quarter's ideas. The six that stayed became the one-page plan the board saw in week three, and the first of them, same-day payout status, shipped in week two.

I replaced the four weekly status meetings with one written update and one 45-minute review. Releases moved from every six weeks to every two.

The hire

From week four we ran the Head of Product search together with their recruiter. I wrote the scorecard from what the team actually needed, not from a generic job description. Priya Nair (fictional) started in week eleven and we overlapped for two weeks.

What I would do differently

I cut too fast for the sales team. Two of the 35 items were promised to named prospects and I learned that in week five. Next time I would run the cut past sales before the board, not after.