10 Keys for the Perfect Product Roadmap

10 SecretProduct Roadmap Strategies

You Can’t Afford to Miss

Written by Kate Swanberg

10 SecretProduct Roadmap Strategies

You Can’t Afford to Miss

A product roadmap is an overall view of the product’s requirements and a

powerful tool for planning and organizing the journey of product

development.

In essence, it’s a visual representation of prioritized user stories. It

outlines when products are scheduled for release, and it includes a list of

of the key features the product needs to deliver to fulfill the product vision.

It’s also crucial for the success of your product - and helps you plan for

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10 secret product roadmap strategies you can’t afford to miss

May 15, ‘15 May 22, ‘15 July ‘15

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Game 1 Demo - Proof ofViability on new platform

First two games available(Road Rage and Brickyard)

First two games available(Road Rage and Brickyard)

FeaturesRoad Rage Completed(Single user)Brickyard Ported (single user)Road Rage multiuserdemostrableFirst multiuser game featurefor Road RageNew features (see pioritized list)

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10 Secret Product Roadmap Strategies

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It’s also crucial for the success of your product - and helps you plan for

the future. A common misconception of agile management is that it avoids

long-term planning in favor of only planning a few weeks out. But going

agile doesn’t mean you don’t have a future plan—it just means that you’re

more flexible about the path you take. Successful agile teams put a strong

focus on strategy and understand their objectives. While agile doesn’t

support highly detailed long-term plans up front, it still accounts for the

future. With agile, you outline your high-level business goals first, think

about the six-month and twelve-month plan, focus on problems over

solutions, abandon timelines, and leave room to adjust priorities as you

work towards the goals.

In short, you’re not held hostage by an outdated plan. Instead, the plan is

flexible.

A large piece of that plan is a great product roadmap.


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It sets the scene and leaves room for innovation by providing

guidance (not lock-in) to focus on the right things, but be able to learn

and adjust along the way.

It aligns the development team, marketing team, and stakeholders

and is just detailed enough so that everyone can derive actionable,

well-timed next steps.

It identifies sources of customer value creation that needs to be

covered.

It sets the pace for continuous innovation to consistently and

sustainably deliver customer value.

It motivates and inspires the team.

Now that we know what the product roadmap is and what it should

achieve, let’s look at the 10 keys to creating a great one.

What does a good productroadmap achieve?


The product vision is the first piece of a great product roadmap - and it

starts with a product vision statement. The vision statement must

articulate the goals for the product. It’s a quick summary that

communicates how your product supports the organization’s strategies.

Think of the vision as the overarching, shared goal that guides the product

development team. In order to create the product, the development team

must understand what the product needs to accomplish.

One of the best ways to create your product vision is in the form of an

elevator pitch. So, you can craft it with this format:

For (target customer)

Who (statement of the need or opportunity)

The (product name) is a (product category)

That (key benefit, compelling reason to buy)

Unlike (primary competitive alternative)

Our product (statement of primary differentiation)

1. A Great Product Vision


This is the path with which your team will fulfill the product vision. The

product strategy is essential for decision making—every decision you

make should align with the product vision.

So, how do you define a good product strategy?

Make sure it captures the target group, the needs addressed, the key

features of the product, and the desired business benefits. Keep in mind

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When you create the vision statement, make sure you address these three

things:

Who the target customer is

What needs the product will address (highlight the most critical needs)

How the product measures up to the competition, and what

makes it stand out

Another helpful tool for creating your product’s vision statement is Roman

Pilcher’s Product Vision Board.

2. The Right Product Strategy

that the product strategy is just one path to the product vision, and it may

turn out to be wrong. So don’t stick to the original strategy at all costs—be

prepared to shift, or pivot if necessary.


This is the path with which your team will fulfill the product vision. The

product strategy is essential for decision making—every decision you

make should align with the product vision.

So, how do you define a good product strategy?

Make sure it captures the target group, the needs addressed, the key

features of the product, and the desired business benefits. Keep in mind

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that the product strategy is just one path to the product vision, and it may

turn out to be wrong. So don’t stick to the original strategy at all costs—be

prepared to shift, or pivot if necessary.

Your roadmap is useless if the people required to develop, market and sell

the product don’t buy into it. The best way to get this buy-in is to involve

the key stakeholders in the creation of the roadmap.

So, put at least a few hours aside and bring everyone together for a two to

four hour workshop. This way, you can leverage their ideas and knowledge

to create a more realistic and actionable roadmap.

Focus on getting consensus on features, requirements, plans, and product

goals.

In terms of the product goals, these can be metric driven goals (e.g.

increase conversions by x%) or more general (e.g. mobile first). Once you

get a consensus from the product team and stakeholders, you can tie

product and feature decisions back to those goals as you move forward

with the product.

3. Get Buy-In from the Team andKey Stakeholders


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Themes are logical groups and requirements at their highest levels.

Features are parts of the product at a very high level. They describe a new

capability the customer will have once the feature is complete.

The way to execute on the requirements is by transforming them into

effective user stories. User stories are the bread and butter of agile

development—and they are the main deliverable for product managers. A

user story is a short description of a customer need. It’s a high level

definition of a requirement, containing just enough information (usually

only a few sentences) so that developers can judge the amount of time and

effort needed to implement it.

You should be able to fit most of your user stories into a simple structure

like this:

“As a [role], I can [product feature], so that [reason].”

For example: “As a consumer, I want shopping cart functionality to easily

purchase items online.”

Each user story should be small enough so that it can be coded and tested

within an iteration (ideally, just a few days).

4. Identify Your Product Requirements and Create Effective User Stories


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After you identify the product requirement features and transform them

into user stories, it’s time to group them into themes. A theme is a

collection of related user stories.

An easy analogy is to pretend you have a bunch of DVDs. You have DVDs

of all kinds - James Bond movies, the Harry Potter saga, sports movies,

etc.

Now let’s say, on your DVD rack, you arrange all the James Bond movies

together. In this case, that grouping of James Bond movies would be a

theme.

The reason you group user stories into themes is because it allows you to

better focus on different areas of the product. For example, the theme of

the next two agile sprints might be “job search” after which it might be

something else, like “apply for a job” for instance. Each of these themes

contains many user stories.

Themes allow you to organize your roadmap in a way that describes value

to customers and other stakeholders. They help keep your roadmap at a

high level, especially for those long-term initiatives.

5. Group User Stories into Themes


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Once you’ve grouped the features into themes, you need to estimate and

order the product requirements. But before you can order the requirements,

you must first estimate a score to represent the value and effort of each

requirement.

You must also be aware of dependencies. A dependency is a requirement

needed before another requirement. Using the James Bond example, you

wouldn’t watch the third James Bond movie before you watched the second.

In terms of scoring, use a prioritization or scoring framework to guide the

conversation between the development team and stakeholders.

Agree on a set of primary business drivers for the product. For example:

1) Attract new users, 2) Retain existing users, and 3) Lower support costs.

Assign relative weights to each of the business drivers based on importance.

For example:

Attract new users – 50%

Retain existing users – 30%

Lower support costs – 20%

6. Estimate and Order the Product’sFeatures


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A chart like this allows you to generate a numeric score for each feature.

Once you agree upon and assign a numeric score for every feature, order

the features in descending order. This will be your product backlog.

Your roadmap needs a realistic timeframe, where you can anticipate the

growth of your product without resorting to speculation. A 12 month time-

frame can work well, but you can also choose a time increment like a cer-

tain number of days, weeks, months, or quarters (or longer, if necessary).

Weight

Feature

x

y

z

Theme

x

y

z

Retainexisting

Lowercosts

3

4

3

Attractusers

3

4

3

3

4

3

TotalScore

3

4

3

50 30 20

7. Choose a Logical Time Frame


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When creating the product roadmap, one thing to focus is on is prioritizing

date vs. goal. Ask yourself if meeting a date or achieving a goal is more

important for your product’s success. If the goal is more important, then

start with the goal and estimate when the goal can be achieved. If you’re

constrained by dates, then start with the date and figure out realistic goals

you can achieve in that timeframe.

For example, the first major release may have to achieve a goal such as

acquisition, while the subsequent releases are launched at fixed dates.

A goal-first approach is important with the product roadmap. Features

should be derived from a corresponding goal. They are your pathway to

achieve that goal.

For example, if your goal is to improve the user experience (UX), then a

feature might be “intuitive, hassle-free user registration.”

8. Prioritize Date vs. Goal

9. Goals Over Features


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The goal-first approach is crucial, especially when it comes to adding fea-

tures to the product roadmap. When adding a feature, there should be a

goal that supports that feature. If not, you can either change the roadmap,

adjust an existing goal, add a new goal, or drop the feature.

For example, the first major release may have to achieve a goal such as

acquisition, while the subsequent releases are launched at fixed dates.

It’s not just enough to have a goal. You must also know how to measure

progress towards and eventual achievement of that goal. That’s where key

progress indicators (KPIs) come into play.

Your KPIs are the metrics you’ll use to determine the progress and success

of the goal.

If your goal is to acquire more users, your metrics may relate to traffic,

search results, and number of downloads. If your goal is to get more

in-app purchases, your metrics may relate to session length, product rev-

enue, active users, etc.

10. Select Helpful Metrics and KPIs


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This white paper has discussed the keys to a great product roadmap. For

help creating your roadmap, and/or transforming your idea into a great

digital product,

Next Steps

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10 Keys for the Perfect Product Roadmap

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