Target state: Product funding 

Each greenfield opportunity, digitize, transform, or capture new market share, should either be killed off due to a lack of ROI or transformed into a mature product. A half-state may exist for middle-tier software (such as services), but even those need an active roadmap to maintain, support, and evolve as the business evolves.

When an opportunity demonstrates the desired outcomes (e.g., required adoption, revenue trends), then shift into a theme-based funding model. At this point, the business should be confident in the ROI of the product and evaluate how much throughput is necessary to meet customer demands, resolve growing technical debt, and stay ahead of the competitors.

These considerations dictate the number of teams to fund and which themes each team owns. Teams should have vertical ownership of components with oversight from product architecture.

Once teams and associated themes are identified, the product managers should leverage demonstrated velocity and burn rate to predict both the annual cost of the team and the maximum amount of scope that a single team can deliver to market. These metrics then inform the sponsors, who decide if additional teams are necessary to reach the objectives.

A Fortune 1000 industrial supply distributor identifies five teams with five themes for investing.