Roadmaps… dreaded roadmaps

ProductCamp Vancouver 2015

Jan Carter

Senior Product Manager, Hootsuite

@janccarter

Michele Macready

Founder and Principal, Illume Consulting

@mmacready

“The clients are

demanding these

features! When are

they coming?”

- CRO

We need a product roadmap...

“Budgets need to be

finalised. What are

your cost & revenue

projections?”

- CFO

We need a product roadmap...

“How many

developers do we

need, what will they

be working on?”

- CTO

We need a product roadmap...

“Give me a couple of

slides so I can update

the investors about

our plans”

- CEO

We need a product roadmap...

I’ll build the product roadmap!

Let me pick one of the many tools and build it...

We have a product roadmap!

We need to REDEFINE the product roadmap

Focus on the Why, Strategy,

Themes, Who will Buy

Not only the Daily (although

that is also important)

A first step: Take a step back from your day-to-day

Try this:

● Put your tool away for a

few days

● Focus on Why/What,

Strategy, Themes

● With whiteboard and post-

its

Get out of your tool and on a whiteboard

http://www.mindtheproduct.com/2014/07/experiments-roadmapping-gov-uk/

● S/T and L/T Themes

● Releases

● Features

● Priorities

And only after: Get into the details of features

Break into teams for 20 min.

Then, come back and share with group

Q. What would you do on Monday to elevate the roadmap to

the strategic from the tactical level?

Let’s break into teams

What did you learn?

What will you do differently tomorrow?

Wrap-up

Thank You!

@janccarter @mmacready