Product
Roadmapping
Why start here?
Product roadmapping may be the best place to start a product journey!
Roadmaps are often set up as schedule-driven, feature factory blueprints that create immense waste and frustration.
But…it doesn’t have to be that way!
Our take on roadmapping
Modern product roadmapping is continuous, thematic roadmapping.
The benefits of this approach are:
Improve planning & predictability by staying within capacity
Remove time wasted on creating & updating incorrect plans
Align more accurately & measurably with strategy
Improve communication with stakeholders, customers, & prospects
Enhance flexibility by balancing discovery & delivery efforts
How it works
Create and use a thematic, outcome-driven roadmap
Set up a flow-based roadmapping process
Use the themes-options-capabillities structure
Integrate the technology roadmap and launch process
Meet stakeholders' communications needs
Collaborative prioritization and estimation techniques
Capacity planning and feature forecasting
Identify health metrics for discovery and delivery
Who gets involved
The core group should be the people in roles responsible for operationalizing product strategy. This is usually at least the:
product manager
design lead
architect or tech lead
Other people in roles typically impacted by roadmap changes or communications should also be considered, such as:
marketing
sales
operations
services
support
strategy
launch/release
If some ancillary stakeholders can’t participate directly, we can accommodate them through readouts and other feedback mechanisms as needed.
Roadmapping worksheets
The worksheets and canvases below are used during our structured learning.
Everything is licensed Creative Commons, so feel free to try them out!
If you have questions about using any of the tools, please reach out!
