Product Manager and co-founder of ProdPad, Janna Bastow, shares practical tips on product roadmaps. Topics include the importance of roadmaps, making decisions and frameworks, challenges of setting timelines, navigating the agency trap, and the benefits of public roadmaps.
Product roadmaps should focus on major problems and initiatives, balancing user needs and business goals to prioritize roadmap items.
Creating a product roadmap requires collaborative input from internal and external stakeholders, focusing on the 'what' and problem areas each initiative addresses.
Roadmaps should embrace uncertainty, treat them as prototypes of strategy, and provide a directional overview without rigid timelines.
Deep dives
The importance of product roadmaps
A product roadmap serves as a strategic communication document, outlining the steps a company will take to fulfill its product vision. It helps align the team and stakeholders, ensuring everyone understands the company's priorities. Roadmaps should focus on the major problems and initiatives rather than granular details. Balancing user needs and business goals is crucial when prioritizing roadmap items. Public roadmaps can be beneficial, but the level of detail can vary depending on the audience. Building a flexible roadmap allows for uncertainty and iterative updates.
The process of creating a product roadmap
Creating a product roadmap involves gathering input from internal and external stakeholders, including engineers, designers, customers, and business leaders. These conversations help identify challenges, opportunities, and strategic objectives to guide the roadmap. A collaborative approach is crucial, ensuring alignment and uncovering potential overlaps or gaps. The roadmap should focus on the 'what' and articulate the problem that each initiative aims to solve. Regular updates and feedback from stakeholders help refine the roadmap and strengthen the overall strategy.
Challenges and pitfalls in building a roadmap
Common pitfalls in building a roadmap include becoming too granular and focusing on feature-level details instead of problem areas. Hiding the roadmap away and failing to iterate based on feedback can hinder progress. Balancing the desire for timelines with the flexible nature of product development can be challenging. Communicating the inherent uncertainty and trade-offs to leadership helps set realistic expectations. Adopting frameworks like OKRs and removing timelines from roadmaps can help address these challenges and align the team around strategic objectives.
Dealing with uncertainty and change in roadmapping
Roadmaps should embrace uncertainty and treat them as prototypes of the strategy. By focusing on the major problem areas and high-level objectives, roadmaps can guide the team without being locked into fixed timelines. Removing specific dates allows for more flexibility and adaptation to changing circumstances. It is essential to equip the team with the right mindset and the ability to adjust and iterate based on feedback and new information. Roadmaps should provide a directional overview without imposing rigid timelines.
Benefits and considerations of public roadmaps
Public roadmaps can be valuable in fostering transparency and alignment with customers and stakeholders. They allow for feedback and input from external sources, helping to validate and refine the roadmap. Public roadmaps should strike a balance between sharing enough information to solicit feedback while avoiding divulging sensitive or detailed internal planning. Tailoring the level of detail to the audience and focusing on high-level objectives and problem areas can make public roadmaps effective communication tools.
The relationship status of Product Roadmaps and Product Managers: it's complicated. To get some great words of advice you better listen to this episode with Janna Bastow. She shares her wisdom and practicable tips how to deal with product roadmaps.
If you want to reach out to Janna, you can find her on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Two more additions:
(1) We talked about the "Agency Trap" - you can read more about this here.
(2) ProdPad has a public roadmap, check it out here.
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