Product Roadmapping: A Practical Guide to Prioritizing Opportunities, Aligning Teams, and Delivering Value to Customers and Stakeholders

216 Pages·2017·12.223 MB·English

by  C. Todd Lombardo, Bruce McCarthy, Evan Ryan, Michael Connors

Praise for Product Roadmaps Relaunched
It’s about time someone brought product roadmapping out of the dark ages of waterfall
development and made it into the strategic communications tool it should be. McCarthy
and team have cracked the code.
—Steve Blank, author of The Startup Owner’s Manual
The theme-driven roadmap is the only way to operate today. By focusing on value rather
than features or dates, this book makes product roadmaps useful again.
—David Cancel, CEO, Drift
Product roadmaps matter. You can’t build a great company unless you have a great strat‐
egy and a product roadmap is a way of clearly articulating that strategy. This book makes
it clear how to develop the core components of a roadmap, the problem set, the value prop‐
ositions, and areas of focus for the customer.
—Jeffrey Bussgang, General Partner, Flybridge Capital
Product roadmaps bridge the gap between Agile tactics and company strategy. This book
is required reading for anyone on my team and I’d recommend it for all software product
leaders.
—Samuel Clemens, VP of Product Management, InsightSquared
When you follow this book’s brilliant advice, a smartly designed roadmap will put your
customers directly in the focus of your product strategy. You’ll shift from the standard
approach of “Look at us and what we can do” to “We understand what you’re dealing with
and we can help you.” Roadmaps will be your company’s competitive strategic advantage.
—Jared Spool, CEO/Founding Principal of UIE
Roadmaps are one of the most critical tools we use as product leaders to drive our strat‐
egy, but also one of the more challenging to get right. This book brings together a breadth
of experience to provide practical advice and war stories to take you to the next level.
—Vanessa Ferranto, Director of Product, The Grommet
This is a fantastic book with so much useful information on every page. Plus, Chapter 7
on prioritization: if it was shorter I would have it tattooed on my arm.
i
—Tim Frick, CEO, Mightybytes, author of Designing for Sustainability
This book clearly articulates what a roadmap should, and more importantly should not,
be in order to make the connection between product vision and what problems need to be
solved to in order to achieve it. It’s a must read for product people, but it shouldn’t stop
there. Anyone who is in a product driven org should be reading this as well so that the
entire team can align around this important tool.
—Ryan Frere, VP Product at Flywire
This is the first book I can wholeheartedly recommend to my students on the subject of
product roadmapping. So long to committing to unvalidated features upfront, and hello to
communicating progress on solving problems.
—Melissa Perri, CEO, ProdUX Labs and founder of Product Institute
Product roadmaps have been long misunderstood as tools of project forecasting rather
than product vision. This book clarifies their purpose—required reading for product lead‐
ers with a vision to share! Finally, product roadmaps are given their due as a critical part
of the Agile process—making sure you’re solving a problem worth solving!
—Lisa Long, Vice President of Innovation and Product Management, Telenor
ii | Praise for Product Roadmaps Relaunched
Product Roadmaps Relaunched
How to Set Direction while Embracing Uncer‐
tainty
C. Todd Lombardo, Bruce McCarthy, Evan Ryan, and
Michael Connors
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Product Roadmaps Relaunched
by C. Todd Lombardo , Bruce McCarthy , Evan Ryan , and Michael Connors
Copyright © 2017 C. Todd Lombardo, Bruce McCarthy, Evan Ryan, Michael Connors. All rights reserved.
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Table of Contents
Praise for Product Roadmaps Relaunched. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i
Foreword. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
Preface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii
1. Relaunching Roadmaps. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
What Is a Product Roadmap? 24
Key Terms and How We’re Using Them 24
Product 24
Stakeholder 25
Customer 25
Where Did Product Roadmaps Come From? 25
Requirements for a Roadmap Relaunch 26
A Roadmap Should Put the Organization’s Plans in a Strategic Context 27
A Roadmap Should Focus on Delivering Value to Customers and the
Organization 28
A Roadmap Should Embrace Learning 30
A Roadmap Should Rally the Organization Around a Single Set of Priorities 31
A Roadmap Should Get Customers Excited About the Product Direction 33
A Roadmap Should Not Make Promises a Team Cannot Deliver On 34
A Roadmap Should Not Require Wasteful Up-Front Design and Estimation 35
A Roadmap Should Not Be Conflated with a Release Plan or a Project Plan 35
Summary 36
2. Components of a Roadmap. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Primary Components 40
v
Product Vision 41
Business Objectives 41
Timeframes 42
Themes 42
Disclaimer 42
Meet the Wombat Garden Hose Co. 43
Developing the Wombat Roadmap 44
Secondary Components 47
Features and Solutions Show How You Intend to Deliver on Your Themes 48
Stage of Development 48
Confidence 49
Target Customers 49
Product Areas 49
Secondary Components Added to the Roadmap 49
Complementary Information 51
Project Information 52
Components in Context 53
Components in Context 53
Components in Context 54
Components in Context 54
Summary 55
3. Gathering Inputs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Understand Where Your Product Is in Its Life Cycle 57
New Product Phase 58
Growth Phase 58
Product Expansion Phase 58
Harvesting Phase 59
End-of-Life Phase 59
Gathering Input from Your Market 59
Understand Your Ecosystem 59
Define the Problem and the Expected Outcome of the Solution 60
vi | Table of Contents
Gathering Input from Your Customers 61
Customer Roles 62
User Types 62
Users Versus Buyers 62
Roles Versus Personas 63
Gathering Input from Your Stakeholders 64
Summary 67
4. Establishing the Why with Product Vision and Strategy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Mission Defines Your Intent 70
Vision Is the Outcome You Seek 71
Values Are Beliefs and Ideals 71
Product Vision: Why Your Product Exists 72
Value Proposition Template 73
Example for Our Wombat Hose 74
Duality of Company and Customer Benefit 75
Product Strategy: How You Achieve Your Vision 75
Objectives and Key Results 76
The 10 universal business objectives 77
Key results (and metrics) 79
Outcome Versus Output 80
Timing 81
Case Study: SpaceX 81
Business Objectives 82
Themes 82
Key Results 83
Summary 83
5. Uncovering Customer Needs Through Themes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Expressing Customer Needs 86
Themes and Subthemes 87
Ways to Uncover Themes and Subthemes 89
User Journeys and Experience Maps 89
Existing Product Needs 91
System Needs 91
Opportunity-Solution Trees 92
Using Job Stories and User Stories to Support Themes 94
Themes Are About Outcomes, Not Outputs 96
Relating Themes Back to Your Objectives 96
Real-World Themes 99
The High Cost of Space Travel 99
Slack’s Theme-based Roadmap 99
Table of Contents | vii
GOV.uk’s Gantt Chart with Benefits 100
Summary 101
6. Deepening Your Roadmap. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Features and Solutions: How They Can Work with Themes 104
When and Why Do Features Appear on the Roadmap? 104
Where Do Features Appear on the Roadmap? 106
Buffer’s feature-level roadmap 106
Feature questions 107
Using Stage of Development 107
Stage of Development Questions 108
Communicating Confidence 108
Confidence Questions 110
Identifying Target Customers 110
Target Customers Questions 111
Tagging Product Areas 111
Product Areas Questions 111
Secondary Components Summary 112
Strive for Balance 112
Summary 112
7. Prioritizing–with Science!. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
Why Prioritization Is Crucial 116
Opportunity Cost 116
Shiny Object Syndrome 117
Exponential Test Matrix Growth 118
Features Versus Tests 119
Bad (but Common) Ways to Prioritize 119
Your, or someone else’s, gut 119
Analyst opinions 120
Popularity 120
Sales requests 120
Support requests 121
Competitive me-too features 121
Prioritization Frameworks 122
Critical Path 122
Kano 124
Desirability, Feasibility, Viability 126
ROI Scorecard 128
A Formula for Prioritization 133
A simple scorecard 133
A more complex scorecard 134
viii | Table of Contents