Product Roadmaps

August 26, 2024 · 3 min read

Product Roadmap Musings

A great product roadmap provides value up and down the company hierarchy.

Executive Level: Setting Expectations

• At the top, for the executive officers, the roadmap sets expectations. Officers influence what gets priority and funding. With a 10,000 ft view, they can see how product developments impact the market and company revenue.

Product Managers and Product Owners: The Vital Link

• For the product managers and product owners (see Product Ownership ), the roadmap is what you eat, sleep and breathe. They will collaborate with other different departments, trade horses, and make the magic happen. They serve as the crucial link between where we’re going and how we get there.

  • Where we’re going (product manager): they set and/or interpret the direction, and formulate a project plan, with requirements and criteria for acceptance
  • How we get there (product owner): formulate a definite plan of action, broken down into milestones and tasks.

• For the contributors, the roadmap provides clarity, direction, and hope for the future, by anticipation

  • Radio Show - Bonus Track When you stop carin’ ‘bout what’s in store, it’s strange how people stop carin’ so much ‘bout you any more… When you stop talking ‘bout what’s in store It’s strange how people stop talking so much about you anymore
  • Provide an opportunity for feedback

Okay Okay. So What Does A Good Roadmap Look Like?

1. Simple Design Show a single product only. Don’t clutter and confuse anyone by trying to do everything. Keep it general. This should be easy to understand and follow. Make it look easy, but only because you’ve put in countless hours of work. To make it look that way. Avoid jargon.
2. Prioritize Ruthlessly: First Things First. Second ThingsNot At All. Only focus on top priority items. The best and most effective companies know that they should only focus their time and energy on the most important initiatives.

What Makes it in?

Recently, my I told my boss that my team is “fully booked up at capacity” for 2025. Our small team of six has more than enough work to keep us busy for the next 16 months. This came as a surprise to him, which made me realize I hadn’t been effectively communicating our team’s future workload to the rest of the company. To address this, I created a Trello board outlining all the upcoming projects that will help take our new product from MVP to a fully realized offering. I also noted that if we want to move faster, we should hire another person or two.

This sparked some lively debates, which was really great. One of the leaders on the ops-leadership meeting asked a great question to challenge my thinking. He wanted to know “have any of these ideas been validated or quantified by the market?”. He wanted to know how many customers actually need these features and how much profit we might be missing out on by not completing these projects sooner. I didn’t have a great answer, aside from saying, “I’m prioritizing by following the company’s North Star.”

Our company could improve its customer synchronization. Often, we don’t really know what the customer wants, and there’s a risk of wasting time trying to figure this out. Sometimes, customers might ask for Ford’s proverbial “faster horses,” when what they really need is something entirely different.

Prioritization and Approval

So, which projects make it into the roadmap? As mentioned earlier, “First things first, second things not at all.” For me, I’m going to continue to follow the North star, using the company’s point of view (see notes on Play Bigger ) as a filter. I will do my TOWS exercise together with the other POs and PMs, and prioritize speed over analysis paralysis.