product roadmaps - tips on how to create and manage roadmaps
TRANSCRIPT
Product RoadmapHow to best create and manage roadmaps?
Why this talk?
Not just features & dates
Take a step back!
http://www.romanpichler.com/blog/agile-product-planning-vision-strategy-tactics/
Outline3pm 3.10pm 3.20pm 3.30pm 3.45pm
Start Intro Examples
Middle Vision & Strategy
Creating &
Managing
End Q&A
What’s wrong?
OutlineDate Jan 10 Jan 10 Jan 10 Jan 10
Name Why roadmaps? Take a step back Create Manage
GoalUnderstand roadmap benefits & pitfalls
Focus first on product vision & strategy
Discuss roadmap creation
Discuss roadmap management
ResultsShared understanding of roadmap role & value
Learned what product vision & strategy entail
Clear on goalsRemove features
Understand pitfallsHappy to be flexibleLearned how to monitor & update
MetricsNo. of participants still on hangout
No. of participants realising need for vision & goals prior to creating a roadmap
No. of times participants will apply a goal or theme oriented roadmap
No. of participants who will rethink stakeholder comms and roadmap monitoring
Why roadmaps - Benefits & pitfalls
Provide direction
Pair objectives & strategy
Continuity of purpose
Facilitate collaboration
Help prioritise
Aid communication
By Martin Eriksson: http://www.mindtheproduct.com/2011/10/what-exactly-is-a-product-manager/
Beware! Roadmap comms
Beware! Roadmap comms
“The challenge for me with roadmaps is always the communication and buy in part from all parts of the business.
I'm in a 23,000 people company, and is a challenge to have everyone agree or be informed properly.”
Christian Miccio, VP of Product
Beware! Hard to predict
Beware! Hard to predict“If at all possible remove dates that are too far in the future. Try instead for a Q1, Q2, MVP3, MVP4, Set up.
This means you can go for themes rather than actual features once dates become too grey to predict with accuracy.
This helps mitigate changes you don't yet know are going to happen.”
Gary Finnigan, Product Owner
Beware! Be flexible
Beware! Be flexible
“Balancing the sales/marketing teams' needs forplanned deliverables to talk about with our need for flexibility to adapt to market changes.”Emily Tate, Product Manager
Why roadmaps?Provide strategic and product
direction Offers rationale for decisions, resource allocation and prioritisation
Effective communication tool
Facilitate stakeholder collaboration
Create continuity of purpose
Take a step back
http://www.romanpichler.com/blog/agile-product-planning-vision-strategy-tactics/
Vision
Vision
“Based on my experience the biggest challenge is to validate the 'vision' behind the whole roadmap”
Antti Suvanto, Product Management Consultant
Start with a vision - business
Start with a vision - business
Start with a vision - product
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/VisionStatement
Start with a vision - business
Start with a vision - business
Start with a vision - product
Short:“Create a scalable set of tools and services which help our partners to sell as many products as efficientlyas possible.”
Long:“To provide an end-to-end partner experience around those tools required by partners to solve their critical business needs or workflow issues, irrespective of the number and types of platforms they sell on.”
Start with a vision Think big – A good vision is lofty and aspirational
A shared vision – Create a common sense of purpose which is shared widely across the company
Motivating – Outlines product benefits for others
Use for decision-making – Use your vision as guide when making business or product decisions
Distinguish between vision and strategy – A vision should not be a plan that outlines how to reach a goal
Take a step back“Making the complex easy and simple”
“Biggest challenge is getting budget approval without committing to delivering features by dates”Stephen Sherwin, Product Manager
“Getting stakeholders to accept that referencing themes and user problems or even KPIs you want to improve is a better way to construct a roadmap than listing features” James Henson, Head of Product
Ryan Frederick, Product Consultant
Goals / OKRs
Goals / OKRs
“Make sure the problem is identified and understood across the teams before the roadmap is drawn up”
Simon Cohen, Product Manager
Goals / OKRs
Goals / OKRsObjective: Enable Not On The High Street (‘NOTHS’) sellersto make product and business decisions based on their NOTHS performance data
Results:NOTHS partners make data informed decisions before and throughout Christmas ’15
NOTHS partners benchmark their gross turnover stats as we believe this will help them make product decisions
But …Don’t forget about strategy, ‘the bit in the middle’
What problem are we trying to solve and for whom?We believe our partners have a need to understand how their products are performing on our platform. We believe they currently suffer from a lack of transparency, making it hard to make decisions.
What is the outcome we are trying to achieve and why?We believe that having real time access to performance data will enable partners to make quick decisions about e.g. their stock levels, products to remove or extra staff to hire. We also believe it will remove some of the strain on our account managers who currently spend a lot of time generating reports for partners.
Strategy – ‘Bit in the middle’
https://blog.intercom.io/talk-product-strategy-saying/
But …Don’t forget about strategy, ‘the bit in the middle’ (cntd)
What are the competition doing?Our competitors are providing sellers access to sales stats, reason why partners expect more transparency from the platforms they sell on. We therefore believe that providing data is therefore a basic hygiene factor.
What does success look like and why?
At least 50% of our 5,000 partners viewing their performance data within 3 months from release to make decision and using the data to make decisions on e.g. stock levels and staff hiring.
So what …We believe our partners have a need to have access to their real time sales data, so that theycan make critical business and product decisions on an ongoing basis
We believe our partners need to benchmark their real time sales data, so that they have more context before making decisions
AssumptionsWe believe these needs can be solved through a real time data dashboard which makes it easy for partners to view and extract all the data they need for their day-to-day operations
We believe the no. 1 value our partners will get out of this dashboard is the ability to see at a glance how their business and products are performing
HypothesesWe believe that providing our partners with a real time data dashboard will help them make criticalbusiness and critical decisions
We know this is true when we see an average of 5 visits of the data dashboard per partner, within 1month following the first dashboard release
We know this is true when we get qualitative feedback from 100 partners within 1 month following the firstdata dashboard indicating that they have used the data to make stock level decisions
Initial validation
Strategy - ‘Bit in the middle’
Business goals
Revenue & profit
User Experience
Business model
Value chain
Customer segmentation Design principles
Competitors User needs
Technology Compliance
Domain Geography
Strategy
Constraints
Take a step backIdentify business vision-> create product vision
Ensure product goals are SMART or OKRs
Think about business and user goals to achieve
Focus on problems first
Don’t forget about strategy, the bit in the middle!
Create a roadmap
Create a roadmap
“Navigating that ‘if I asked them what they wanted they would have said faster horses’ space in a way that you keep users, bring innovation and strengthen your own identity”
Sherwyn Singh, Talent & Leadership Coach
Roadmap Wish list
Roadmap Customer only
Problems not features
"If I had one hour to save the world I would spend 45 minutes defining the problem and only 5 minutes finding the solution”
Albert Einstein
Unknown unknowns
Pitfalls when creating
What’s wrong?What is the context?
Why are we doing certain things? Why not?
What value are we looking to deliver and why?
What business or user problems are we looking to solve, for whom and why?
Don’t forget that your roadmap is a communication and collaboration tool!
Pitfalls when creatingCommon pitfalls when creating a roadmap:
Why? - Just a collection of features and timings
Dependencies - Not thinking about cross-product or team dependencies
“Solution sickness” - Fixating on a feature or solution upfront
Facilitate learning“Working towards goals without getting fixated on specific features leaves room for learning as well. Over time one may learn more about the problems to be solved, and also possible solutions to problems.
Going further one may even learn that the problem to be solved is somewhere else than originally thought, i.e. there is an even more important problem that needs to be solved, but the customer (or the solution provider) was not able to identify that in the beginning.”
Stefan Baggström, Solution Architect
Goal oriented roadmap
Create a roadmap
Roadmap themes
Owning the roadmapWho typically creates and owns a product roadmap?
Product Manager
Roadmap stakeholdersWho typically influences a product roadmap?
Stakeholders
Roadmap stakeholders
By Janna Bastow: http://www.mindtheproduct.com/2014/07/product-roadmapping-prioritisation-portfolio/
Create a roadmapDon’t fixate on features; focus on problems, goals, assumptions or themes instead
Important to not lose sight of measurable results
Consider adding extra layers to allow for risks, dependencies and product discovery (‘unknowns’)
Manage a roadmap
Manage a roadmap“One of the challenges is around stakeholder management in the agile world.
If it goes in a roadmap (and in some ways you have to question the term 'roadmap') with a month/quarter against it then that is often taken as gospel by stakeholder and reported on from them accordingly :-)
At best the roadmap is really only accurate the day you drew it!”
Alistair Harvey, Head of Product
Roadmap a one off
Roadmap Set in stone
Manage a roadmap
Roadmap updates
Manage a roadmap
Manage a roadmap
Product Roadmap - 3 things
3 things to take away:
Take a step back before creating a roadmap
A roadmap needs strategic context
Stakeholder communication is critical
Thank you!
@MAA1
https://www.linkedin.com/in/abrahammarc
https://marcabraham.wordpress.com/
https://medium.com/@maa1
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https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/VisionStatement
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Image Credits
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