Although most Product Managers nonetheless use them of their day-to-day, there may be heated dialogue round the precise technique 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 ought to be. Questions surrounding them—ought to Product Roadmaps be an inventory of options and timelines? Or ought to they be based mostly on imaginative and prescient and end result? Ought to they exist in any respect?—are usually not only a struggle over a particular 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 will not be an precise map, nevertheless it acts like a map in that it helps you outline the place you might be, the place you’d prefer to go, and the best way to get there. Roadmapping will not be 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 realize your Product Imaginative and prescient. It focuses on the worth you plan to ship to your buyer and your group as a way 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 Flawed Strategy to Do Product Roadmaps
Think about you’re occurring a roadtrip with buddies. 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 controversy 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 an inventory 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 a substitute 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 really about imaginative and prescient and milestones. A roadmap will not be a promise, exactly as a result of a imaginative and prescient will not be a promise. It’s a course.
However many stakeholders take Product Roadmaps as guarantees and suggestion containers. They maintain Product Managers to the roadmap timeline, whereas concurrently force-feeding them characteristic options. That is how the roadmap turns into a launch plan, and the way your Product Workforce turns into a characteristic manufacturing facility.
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 might on the best way to…wherever you find yourself. To prime it off, your loved ones and buddies preserve calling with sandwich options, and demand you drive out of your technique to strive them. Now you’re in Canada, and everybody has a abdomen ache.
Lack of give attention to imaginative and prescient means your Product Workforce gained’t successfully clear up enterprise or buyer issues, regardless of how laborious you’re employed. Churning out options and hitting deadlines with out course means your product and firm will simply find yourself…wherever.
The Proper Strategy to Do Product Roadmaps
“Your job is to not prioritize and doc characteristic requests. Your job is to ship a product that’s precious, usable and possible.”
Marty Cagan
Product Managers who need to reclaim Product Roadmaps must be able to push again towards the lengthy historical past of them being misused as Mission Administration instruments. Listed here are some concepts on how:
The End result-Based mostly Product Roadmap
There have been numerous makes an attempt to struggle towards the flood of inflexible timelines and endless characteristic requests. From alternative resolution bushes to OKRs, proposed options to roadmaps all have one factor in frequent: they give attention to end result over output.
End result-based Product Roadmaps combine this into roadmaps. They begin with the Product Imaginative and prescient and work right down to the particular objects that may see this imaginative and prescient by way of. This stuff could 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 should ship. It’s extra of a technique to talk hypotheses and give you starting-point actions that transfer in the direction of the imaginative and prescient, uncovering what the Product Workforce will work on to search out new product alternatives and attending to the core why behind potential options.
When you’re inquisitive about how an End result-Based mostly Product Roadmap appears in motion, take a look at our Product Roadmap Template, the place we cowl 4 several types 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 could be useful to situate the venture in actuality. However as a substitute of making deadlines and clinging tightly to them, End result-Based mostly Product Roadmaps use time horizons as a substitute.
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 might be extra detailed round Now, and turn out to be more and more fuzzy as you progress into later. Bear in mind, a Product Roadmap is about course, not dedication.
You’ll discover within the instance that the targets are broad, with little instruction on actual steps to get there. By specializing in the bigger strategic aims of a enterprise, giving a unfastened timeframe, and setting your Product Workforce unfastened, you allow them to be problem-solvers as a substitute of characteristic robots. They know the big-picture targets, and may give you the very best options on the best way to attain them.
When your workforce has used the roadmap to higher outline the product and necessities, that’s while you meet with engineers, design, and Mission Administration to set concrete dates and timeline—in a doc utterly separate from the Product Roadmap.
Loss of life of Function Roadmaps?
At this level, you could be pondering, “However wait, I take advantage of Function 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. Function 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 listing.
As their title would indicate, Function Roadmaps are feature-focused, not outcome-focused. They usually soar to the answer with out absolutely going by way 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 while you absolutely perceive the issue that you simply’re fixing. Sadly, nonetheless, many deal with Function Roadmaps as to-do lists; all the objects that must 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 an inventory of options, it’s solely pure that they’re used and interpreted as a venture plan.
Tl;dr: Be happy to proceed utilizing Function Roadmaps the place applicable, however concentrate on their limitations and disadvantages.
Can Communication Save the Roadmap?
Roadmaps could be precious instruments to 1) align the Product Workforce with firm targets, and a couple of) present engineers and designers construction and targets 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 fully. Even when we transfer away from Function Roadmaps to End result-Based mostly Roadmaps, and from timelines to time horizons, previous 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 must take into consideration that roadmaps are versatile. Every time you replace the roadmap, be sure that to replace stakeholder expectations. It may assist to place the roadmap in a spot the place all related stakeholders can simply entry it.
Make the aims as easy and clear as potential, and talk the way you’re defining these aims. Are they outcome-led? Experiment-led? What’s the purpose you’re working in the direction of, and what does success appear like?
These practices might help us reclaim Product Roadmaps and constantly talk their correct utilization to stakeholders, leaders, and different Product Folks to allow them to proceed to be highly effective vision-setting and alignment instruments.
