Although most Product Managers nonetheless use them of their day-to-day, there may be heated dialogue round the suitable solution to deploy Product Roadmaps amongst Product thought leaders.
Why are Product Roadmaps getting a lot warmth? It’s as a result of they exemplify a bigger debate on what the position of a Product Supervisor must 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?—usually are not only a combat 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?
Effectively, sort 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 will course-correct.
What’s a Product Roadmap?
A roadmap is just not an precise map, however it acts like a map in that it helps you outline the place you’re, the place you’d prefer to go, and the best way 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 propose to realize your Product Imaginative and prescient. It focuses on the worth you plan to ship to your buyer and your group with the intention to rally assist and coordinate effort amongst stakeholders… It’s about making a shared understanding of the place you’re going and why [emphasis added].”
The Mistaken Method to Do Product Roadmaps
Think about you’re happening a roadtrip with pals. You get within the automotive with an concept 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 strive, 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 path.
However many stakeholders take Product Roadmaps as guarantees and suggestion packing containers. They maintain Product Managers to the roadmap timeline, whereas concurrently force-feeding them characteristic solutions. That is how the roadmap turns into a launch plan, and the way your Product Group turns into a characteristic manufacturing facility.
A roadtrip like this may 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 could possibly on the best way to…wherever you find yourself. To high it off, your loved ones and pals maintain calling with sandwich solutions, and demand you drive out of your solution to strive 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 remedy enterprise or buyer issues, regardless of how laborious you’re employed. Churning out options and hitting deadlines with out path means your product and firm will simply find yourself…wherever.
The Proper Method to Do Product Roadmaps
“Your job is to not prioritize and doc characteristic requests. Your job is to ship a product that’s invaluable, usable and possible.”
Marty Cagan
Product Managers who need to reclaim Product Roadmaps need to be able to push again towards the lengthy historical past of them being misused as Venture Administration instruments. Listed here are some concepts on how:
The End result-Based mostly Product Roadmap
There have been numerous makes an attempt to combat towards the flood of inflexible timelines and unending characteristic requests. From alternative answer timber to OKRs, proposed options to roadmaps all have one factor in widespread: 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 particular gadgets that can see this imaginative and prescient by means of. These things might 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’ll ship. It’s extra of a solution to talk hypotheses and provide you with starting-point actions that transfer in the direction of the imaginative and prescient, uncovering what the Product Group will work on to search out new product alternatives and attending to the core why behind potential options.
Should you’re interested by how an End result-Based mostly Product Roadmap appears to be like in motion, try our Product Roadmap Template, the place we cowl 4 several types of Product Roadmaps.
Cancel Timelines, Use Time Horizons
Timelines and deadlines are essential, 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 embody any point out of time. Timeframes present a basic define, which might be useful to situate the challenge in actuality. However as an alternative of making deadlines and clinging tightly to them, End result-Based mostly Product Roadmaps use time horizons as an alternative.
Time horizons cowl present, near-term, and future plans. That is also called 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 path, 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 goals 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 the most effective options on the best way to attain them.
When your group has used the roadmap to raised outline the product and necessities, that’s whenever you meet with engineers, design, and Venture Administration to set concrete dates and timeline—in a doc utterly separate from the Product Roadmap.
Demise of Characteristic Roadmaps?
At this level, you may be pondering, “However wait, I take advantage of Characteristic Roadmaps on a regular basis! Are they actually that unhealthy?” Sure, and no.
They aren’t “unhealthy” 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 soar to the answer with out absolutely going by means of the Product discovery course of, leading to options that don’t transfer the needle in the direction of assembly buyer or enterprise wants.
There is a time and a spot to speak options, and that’s whenever you absolutely perceive the issue that you simply’re fixing. Sadly, nevertheless, many deal with Characteristic Roadmaps as to-do lists; the entire gadgets that should be delivered by a sure date (the epitome of what all of the nay-sayers hate about Product Roadmaps). When your group 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 applicable, however pay attention to their limitations and disadvantages.
Can Communication Save the Roadmap?
Roadmaps might be invaluable instruments to 1) align the Product Group with firm objectives, and a pair 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 totally. Even when we transfer away from Characteristic Roadmaps to End result-Based mostly Roadmaps, and from timelines to time horizons, outdated habits die laborious.
The reply is communication, recommunication, and communication once more. And bear in mind, there are two sides to communication; It’s the accountability of the Product Supervisor to speak to stakeholders, and it’s the accountability of stakeholders to pay attention. The message: Product Roadmaps aren’t to-do lists, and timeframes aren’t set in stone.
PMs additionally need to bear in mind that roadmaps are versatile. Every time you replace the roadmap, ensure that to replace stakeholder expectations. It could possibly assist to place the roadmap in a spot the place all related stakeholders can simply entry it.
Make the goals as easy and clear as potential, and talk the way you’re defining these goals. Are they outcome-led? Experiment-led? What’s the aim you’re working in the direction of, and what does success appear to be?
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.
