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August 13 - August 14, 2019
A good roadmap is not so much a project plan as a strategic communication tool, a statement of intent and direction.
It focuses on the value you propose to deliver to your customer and your organization in order to rally support and coordinate effort among stakeholders.
A product is how you deliver value to your organization’s customers.
We use the term stakeholder to refer to all the internal and external colleagues and partners who are involved with the product being developed, marketed, sold, and serviced.
We use the term customer to refer to the recipient of the value your product provides,
A product roadmap should: Put the organization’s plans in a strategic context Focus on delivering value to customers and the organization Embrace learning as part of a successful product development process Rally the organization around a single set of priorities Get customers excited about the product’s direction
At the same time, a product roadmap should not: Make promises product teams aren’t confident they will deliver on Require a wasteful process of up-front design and estimation Be conflated with a project plan or a release plan (we cannot stress this enough)
The roadmap is a critical — and frequently missed — opportunity to articulate why you are doing this product, why it’s important, and why the things on it are absolutely vital to success.
Your product roadmap should slot right in between your company vision and your more detailed development, release, and operational plans.
we recommend starting with the chunks of value you intend to deliver that will build up over time to accomplish your vision. Often this is a set of high-level customer needs, problems, or jobs to be done, which we call themes.
The roadmap should clarify plans, but without providing false precision that someone else might be banking on.”
Commit to outcomes rather than output
A Roadmap Should Rally the Organization Around a Single Set of Priorities
The best way we’ve found to rally these people is to involve them in the decisions that will affect them.
A roadmap has been called a prototype of your strategy, and allowing customers to view your roadmap allows them to offer feedback on and buy into your direction.
“A roadmap is a two-way communication device. When a customer sees a roadmap, when they see what I’m showing them, we start a dialog about business pain and priorities. They tell me, ‘Oh, that’s going to solve a problem for me.’”
A roadmap is a strategic document that should offer guidance to your teams on what to focus on. If your team has a track record of missing commitments, there’s likely a prioritization and even an estimation problem
A roadmap is a strategic artifact, whereas a release plan is a tactical artifact about execution.
The primary components for any product roadmap Product vision Business objectives Themes Timeframes Disclaimer
Secondary components to answer the concerns of certain stakeholders Features and solutions Confidence Stage of development Target customers Product areas
Complementary information to provide context for your roadmap Project information Platform considerations Fin...
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It needs to tell the story of what it will be like when you achieve your vision, what it will take to get there, and how you will know if you are making progress.
five primary phases of a product’s life cycle: New Growth Expansion Harvesting End of life
Mission Defines Your Intent A mission is not what you value, nor is it a vision for the future; it’s the intent you hold right now and the purpose driving you to realize your vision.
four key elements to a well-crafted mission statement: Value What value does your mission bring to the world? Inspiration How does your mission inspire your team to make the vision a reality? Plausibility Is your mission realistic and achievable? If not, it’s disheartening, and people won’t be willing to work at it. If it seems achievable, however, people will work their tails off to make it happen. Specificity Is your mission specific to your business, industry, and/or sector? Make sure it’s relevant and resonates with the organization.
A company vision should be about a longer-term outcome that has an impact on the lives of the people your product serves, as well as on your organization.
your values will help you determine what’s right or wrong for your business, but not which direction to take — that’s where your vision and mission come in.
Product vision clarifies why you are bringing a product to market in the first place, and what its success will mean to the world and to the organization.
Your product strategy is the bridge that connects your high-level vision to the specifics of your roadmap.
guidelines on OKRs as they apply to product roadmapping: Everything on the roadmap must be tied to at least one of your objectives. Stick to a manageable number of objectives; from our experience and research, fewer than five seems to be most effective. Focus on outcomes, not output.
“A roadmap is not a release plan. A roadmap is a sequence of stakeholder priorities and requires concept feasibility for delivery.
Your roadmap should be a high-level view of what needs and problems your product should solve, while also helping you confirm why. In contrast, your release plan should detail how you will solve them.
Organizing roadmaps by theme and subtheme can have a number of distinct advantages. Some of those include: Focusing on customer needs helps the team say “no” to unnecessary solutions. Focusing on customer needs helps the team shift away from playing competitive catch-up (and instead gain competitive advantage by focusing on what’s missing or what nobody else is doing). Focusing on customer needs creates a better and more intuitive narrative for sales and marketing. A clearly defined need makes solution development easier. Starting with customer needs provides development teams with more
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we recommend adding features as subthemes so it is clear what problem they are intended to solve.
there’s no such thing as a free demo.
if you are not going to get it all done, you have to be very sure you get the most important things done before something changes and your resources are redirected.
Always assume you may have to stop work at any time.
all projects are always at risk of cancellation or downsizing.
Shuttle diplomacy involves meeting with each party individually to reach decisions that require compromise and trade-offs.
presenting the roadmap early and often to stakeholders around the organization is critical to getting feedback and buy-in.
