Although most Product Managers nonetheless use them of their day-to-day, there may be heated dialogue amongst Product thought leaders round the correct solution to deploy Product Roadmaps.
Why are Product Roadmaps getting a lot warmth? It’s as a result of they exemplify a bigger debate on what the function of a Product Supervisor ought to be. Questions surrounding them—ought to Product Roadmaps be a listing of options and timelines? Or ought to they be primarily based on imaginative and prescient and final result? Ought to they exist in any respect?—should not only a struggle over a selected Product Administration framework. They’re a continuation of the Waterfall vs Agile debate, and present rising concern that Product Roadmaps have been co-opted by “evil” Waterfall processes. Have they?
Nicely, form of. However there’s nonetheless hope. You heard it right here first! Product Roadmaps are not a misplaced trigger! They’re simply misunderstood. Let’s demystify what Product Roadmaps are, how they’ve been misused, and the way we are able to course-correct.
What’s a Product Roadmap?
A roadmap is just not an precise map, but it surely acts like a map in that it helps you outline the place you might be, the place you’d wish to go, and tips on how to get there. Roadmapping is just not timetabling. It’s about aligning expectations and speaking the strategic imaginative and prescient of your product.
That is the official definition of Product Roadmaps within the e-book “Product Roadmaps” by Bruce McCarthy:
“A Product Roadmap describes how you plan to attain your Product Imaginative and prescient. It focuses on the worth you intend to ship to your buyer and your group with a view to rally help and coordinate effort amongst stakeholders… It’s about making a shared understanding of the place you’re going and why [emphasis added].”
The Incorrect Technique to Do Product Roadmaps
Think about you’re happening a roadtrip with pals. You get within the automotive with an thought of how the journey goes to go: doing Route 66, hitting the highest US nationwide parks, driving from Canada to Argentina. A imaginative and prescient, if you’ll. However you don’t know each final element: the remainder stops, detours, and flat tires.
The talk round roadmaps comes from precisely this. Product Managers make extremely detailed roadmaps, and stakeholders and management then maintain them to those roadmaps as in the event that they’re set in stone.
Going again to the roadtrip, it’s as in case you wrote out a listing of potential eating places and meals to attempt, solely to have your pal get mad at you for consuming a salad at Jimmy’s Roadside Diner as an alternative of a sandwich such as you mentioned. Who cares? So long as you continue to make it to Vegas, it’s all good.
Roadmaps are misunderstood as being about deadlines, options, and duties, however they’re truly about imaginative and prescient and milestones. A roadmap is just not a promise, exactly as a result of a imaginative and prescient is just not a promise. It’s a course.
However many stakeholders take Product Roadmaps as guarantees and suggestion bins. They maintain Product Managers to the roadmap timeline, whereas concurrently force-feeding them characteristic recommendations. That is how the roadmap turns into a launch plan, and the way your Product Group turns into a characteristic manufacturing unit.
A roadtrip like this might be all sandwiches, no Vegas. It doesn’t even matter in case you make it to Vegas, so long as you ate as many sandwiches as you can on the best way to…wherever you find yourself. To high it off, your loved ones and pals hold calling with sandwich recommendations, and demand you drive out of your solution to attempt them. Now you’re in Canada, and everybody has a abdomen ache.
Lack of concentrate on imaginative and prescient means your Product Group received’t successfully clear up enterprise or buyer issues, regardless of how onerous you’re employed. Churning out options and hitting deadlines with out course means your product and firm will simply find yourself…wherever.
The Proper Technique to Do Product Roadmaps
“Your job is to not prioritize and doc characteristic requests. Your job is to ship a product that’s useful, usable and possible.”
Marty Cagan
Product Managers who wish to reclaim Product Roadmaps should be able to push again in opposition to the lengthy historical past of them being misused as Challenge Administration instruments. Listed below are some concepts on how:
The End result-Primarily based Product Roadmap
There have been varied makes an attempt to struggle in opposition to the flood of inflexible timelines and endless characteristic requests. From alternative answer timber to OKRs, proposed alternate options to roadmaps all have one factor in frequent: they concentrate on final result over output.
End result-based Product Roadmaps combine this into roadmaps. They begin with the Product Imaginative and prescient and work all the way down to the precise objects that may see this imaginative and prescient by way of. This stuff will be delivery-based (options) or discovery-based (experiments).
A Product Roadmap like this isn’t set in stone. It doesn’t make any guarantees on what it would ship. It’s extra of a solution to talk hypotheses and provide you with starting-point actions that transfer in direction of the imaginative and prescient, uncovering what the Product Group will work on to seek out new product alternatives and attending to the core why behind potential options.
For those who’re inquisitive about how an End result-Primarily based Product Roadmap seems in motion, take a look at our Product Roadmap Template, the place we cowl 4 various kinds of Product Roadmaps.
Cancel Timelines, Use Time Horizons
Timelines and deadlines are necessary, however they’re not the job of a Product Roadmap, and imposing them isn’t the job of the Product Supervisor.
This isn’t to say that roadmaps shouldn’t embrace any point out of time. Timeframes present a basic define, which will be useful to situate the challenge in actuality. However as an alternative of making deadlines and clinging tightly to them, End result-Primarily based Product Roadmaps use time horizons as an alternative.
Time horizons cowl present, near-term, and future plans. That is often known as the Now, Subsequent, Later framework:
- Now: 1-2 months
- Subsequent: 3-6 months
- Later: 6+ months
Your roadmap shall be extra detailed round Now, and change into more and more fuzzy as you progress into later. Keep in mind, a Product Roadmap is about course, not dedication.
You’ll discover within the instance that the objectives are broad, with little instruction on actual steps to get there. By specializing in the bigger strategic targets of a enterprise, giving a free timeframe, and setting your Product Group free, you allow them to be problem-solvers as an alternative of characteristic robots. They know the big-picture objectives, and might provide you with one of the best options on tips on how to attain them.
When your workforce has used the roadmap to raised outline the product and necessities, that’s once you meet with engineers, design, and Challenge Administration to set concrete dates and timeline—in a doc utterly separate from the Product Roadmap.
Loss of life of Characteristic Roadmaps?
At this level, you is perhaps considering, “However wait, I exploit Characteristic Roadmaps on a regular basis! Are they actually that dangerous?” Sure, and no.
They aren’t “dangerous” per se, however they’re harmful as a result of extra usually than they result in miscommunication. Characteristic Roadmaps can create worth, however solely on the finish of discovery, and provided that you make it clear to stakeholders that it’s a imaginative and prescient map, not a to-do record.
As their title would suggest, Characteristic Roadmaps are feature-focused, not outcome-focused. They usually leap to the answer with out totally going by way of the Product discovery course of, leading to options that don’t transfer the needle in direction of assembly buyer or enterprise wants.
There is a time and a spot to speak options, and that’s once you totally perceive the issue that you simply’re fixing. Sadly, nonetheless, many deal with Characteristic Roadmaps as to-do lists; all the objects that have to be delivered by a sure date (the epitome of what all of the nay-sayers hate about Product Roadmaps). When your workforce and stakeholders see a listing of options, it’s solely pure that they’re used and interpreted as a challenge plan.
Tl;dr: Be at liberty to proceed utilizing Characteristic Roadmaps the place acceptable, however pay attention to their limitations and drawbacks.
Can Communication Save the Roadmap?
Roadmaps will be useful instruments to 1) align the Product Group with firm objectives, and a couple of) present engineers and designers construction and objectives with out telling them precisely what to do.
However as a result of there may be such widespread misunderstanding and misuse of Product Roadmaps, it’s tempting to ditch them solely. Even when we transfer away from Characteristic Roadmaps to End result-Primarily based Roadmaps, and from timelines to time horizons, previous habits die onerous.
The reply is communication, recommunication, and communication once more. And bear in mind, there are two sides to communication; It’s the duty of the Product Supervisor to speak to stakeholders, and it’s the duty of stakeholders to hear. The message: Product Roadmaps aren’t to-do lists, and timeframes aren’t set in stone.
PMs additionally should take into consideration that roadmaps are versatile. Every time you replace the roadmap, be certain to replace stakeholder expectations. It could assist to place the roadmap in a spot the place all related stakeholders can simply entry it.
Make the targets as easy and clear as potential, and talk the way you’re defining these targets. Are they outcome-led? Experiment-led? What’s the purpose you’re working in direction of, and what does success appear like?
These practices may also help us reclaim Product Roadmaps and constantly talk their correct utilization to stakeholders, leaders, and different Product Individuals to allow them to proceed to be highly effective vision-setting and alignment instruments.
