Product strategy when one customer pays most of the bills

A dominant customer funds the company and shapes it. The risk is not the revenue concentration itself but the gradual conversion of a product organisation into a bespoke delivery team.

Separate the two backlogs

Bespoke commitments should be visible, costed and time-boxed. Blending them into the product roadmap makes the trade-off invisible to everyone including the board.

What to check before you commit

1. Keep bespoke and product backlogs separate.
2. Cost bespoke work explicitly.
3. Set a target concentration level and track it.

A note on measurement

Teams that treat concentrated revenue as an engineering project usually measure the wrong thing. Instrument the business outcome first — cycle time, cost per transaction, resolution rate, revenue retention — then work backwards to the technical metrics that move it.