Rerun: Roadmaps are dead. Long live roadmaps! – Janna Bastow on The Product Experience
Apr 10, 2024
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Janna Bastow, Co-founder of Mind the Product and ProdPad, discusses redefining roadmaps in product management by focusing on outcomes, experimentation over deadlines, driving change through portfolio roadmaps, and the value of public roadmaps and customer feedback. She advocates for human-readable roadmaps that foster flexibility and trust within development teams.
Roadmaps are communication tools for strategy alignment and problem-solving.
Embracing uncertainty, roadmaps focus on flexibility, experimentation, and problem-solving over fixed timelines.
Deep dives
Understanding Roadmaps as Communication Tools for Strategy
Roadmaps are viewed as communication tools that outline a company's strategy and steps to achieve its vision. They are considered prototypes for strategies, allowing for learning and iteration at a strategic level. By presenting problems and opportunities to be solved, roadmaps facilitate feedback and alignment within teams and across departments.
Mapping Roadmaps to Align Business Objectives and Customer Needs
Roadmaps serve to align business goals with solving customer problems, aiming to achieve desired outcomes for both. They outline stepping stones towards business objectives while focusing on addressing customer needs. This approach ensures that each roadmap item is seen as a problem to be solved or an opportunity to be explored, fostering a customer-centered approach.
Embracing Uncertainty and Experimentation in Roadmapping
Acknowledging uncertainty as inherent in product development, roadmaps are seen as flexible guides rather than strict commitments. They encourage experimentation and discovery by framing roadmap items as problems to be explored. By treating roadmap items as experiments, teams can adapt, learn, and prioritize based on ongoing feedback and evolving insights.
Challenging the Use of Dates in Roadmaps for Effective Strategy Execution
Rejecting rigid timelines in roadmaps allows for a focus on problem-solving and outcomes rather than fixed deadlines. By separating hard launches from soft launches, teams can maintain flexibility and avoid unnecessary stress and tech debt. Emphasizing problem-solving and experimentation over date-driven commitments enhances adaptability and quality in product development.
When you have questions about roadmaps, it pays to talk to someone who has spent way too much of her life thinking about them. Janna Bastow – co-founder of both Mind the Product and ProdPad joins us to give advice to anyone ready to break up with their roadmap.
Our Hosts Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.
Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.
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