How To Build A Highly Effective Product Roadmap

©2006-2014 280 Group LLC. All rights reserved. May not be distributed without prior written permission

©2006 280 Group LLC. All rights reserved. May not be distributed without prior written permission

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Today’s Speaker

Presenter:

Brian Lawley CEO & Founder

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mailto:[email protected]

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About This Webinar

• Teaches best practices for creating roadmaps

• Included in 280 Group Product Roadmap Toolkit™

• Additional templates & files in the Toolkit:

– 14 types of Roadmaps

– 75 roadmap templates

• Quarterly

• Yearly

• Combined

– Feature prioritization matrix

– Project prioritization matrix

– Solution component matrix

– Best practices white paper

• $99 single user license

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Agenda

• About the 280 Group

• What is a Roadmap?

• Types of Roadmaps & Uses

• 8 Step Process to Create a Product Roadmap

• Prioritizing Multiple Projects

• Best Practices

• All examples in presentation are fabricated

• Templates for all roadmaps available in 280 Group Product Roadmap Toolkit at www.280group.com

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Brian Lawley: CEO & Founder

Thought Leadership in

Product Management Award

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http://www.280group.com/resource-central/books/42-rules-of-product-management-2/

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The 280 Group

Silicon Valley Innovation

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Mission

We transform organizations and

individuals to perform highly

effective Product Management

based on our innovative and easily

adopted Optimal Product Process™

framework.

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Optimal Product Process™

• >200 years experience

• Any development methodology

• Flexible & customizable

• Strategic/Tactical

• All companies

• Any industry

Approval to fund

business planning

Approval to fund

development

Product ready

for field testing

Product and

organization ready

On-going

marketing ready

New version or

retire completely

Marketing Plan End of Life PlanLaunch Plan

Beta Plan

Market Strategy Document

Roadmap Document

Product Description Document

Market Needs Document

Business Case Document

PM + Engineering (Agile, Hybrid, Waterfall)

PlanConceive Qualify Run Beta/Pilot program

Write launchplan

Release product,gather feedback

Write marketingplan

Discover opportunities

Develop Launch Maximize

Validate product/market fit

Create roadmapand strategy

Solidify business plans

Solidify develop plans

Write beta plan Support sales

Communicate EOL

Retire

Plan sunsetor replacement

Perform post mortem

Deliver final documents

Plan EOL and next release

Develop preliminarydocuments

Perform post mortem

Test messaging and positioning

Final feature list

Run/monitormarketing

Phases and

Activities

Exit Criteria

MarketingProduct

Product

Management

EXECUTIONSTRATEGY

The OPP framework is completely customizable and

flexible, making it easily adopted by any company

regardless of size, maturity, or development methodology.

Development – Agile, Hybrid, Waterfall

Documentation – None, Lightweight, Formal

Maturity – Startup, Small/Medium, Enterprise

Optimal Product Process™ (OPP)

Optimal Product Process Methodology © 280 Group, 2011-2014

Source: Conceive to Retire from AIPMM Product Management Body of Knowledge® (ProdBOK®)

Optimizing Product Management™

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Complete solutions

to make you a great

Product Manager

and advance your

career in every

phase

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• Assessments & Custom Optimization Plans

• Consulting & Contractors

• Training

• Coaching

• Certifications

• Templates

Comprehensive Solutions for

Optimizing PM Teams

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• $399 PM Office Pro license

• Eight Toolkits - $99 per single user license

– Product Management Lifecycle Toolkit™

– Product Launch Toolkit™

– Product Roadmap Toolkit™

– Feature Prioritization Toolkit™

– Beta Program Toolkit™

– Developer Program Toolkit™

– Product Reviews Toolkit™

– Competitive Analysis Toolkit™

• Contents

– Templates and Samples

– Narrated presentations

– White papers

Product Management Office™

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Why a Roadmap?

• Problems – Internal groups make unreasonable demands

– Sales losing a large deal

– Analysts/press question company direction

– Engineering needs guidance

– Executives pitching investors

• Uses for Roadmaps – Communicate vision, plans & credibility

– Assist with internal planning & setting priorities

– Selling tool for customers & partnerships

– Create FUD in marketplace

– Obtain funding

We Need a Product

Road Map!

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The Challenge

• Wide variation in definitions

• Even wider variation in uses

• Often created reactively not proactively

• Source of much trouble if not careful

• Formats – PowerPoint

– Excel

– Word

– Visio

– MS Project

– html

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Poll: Do You Use Standardized

Roadmaps at Your Company?



What is a Product Roadmap?

n 1: a detailed plan or explanation to guide you in

determining a course of action; Often used to support

strategic or long-term planning

n 2: a high-level sketch of where the company’s products

are going to give internal and external constituents the

ability to plan accordingly

Product Roadmap

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Types Of Roadmaps

• Market & Strategy

• Visionary

• Technology

• Platform

• Product

– Internal

– External

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Market & Strategy Roadmap

Year One Year Two

Markets Healthcare Financial

Manufacturing

Partner XYZ Company

Build In-

House

2.X Release

Acquire Data analytics

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Visionary Roadmap

Retail Music Stores Vanishing

All Media From Anywhere

Complete Digital Living Room

Vis

ion O

f T

he F

utu

re

Industr

y T

rends

Peer to Peer Sharing

Ipod & portable video devices

2006 2007 2008

Movies & TV available on demand

Wi Fi & Connectivity Widely Available

Major Labels Disappear

3G Networks Pervasive

Ipod Hi Fi & DVR

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Technology Roadmap

Vista

QuickTime 8

Windows Media 10

Exte

rnal/In

dustr

y

Facto

rs

Inte

rnal T

echnolo

gy

Develo

pm

ent

Vista-UI components

DirectX 10

MPEG5

Custom codec

Maintenance/XP rev

Vista Optimized Product

Re-architected foundation

2006 2007 2008

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Technology Across Products

2006 2007 2008

Product 1 Codec New Architecture

Product 2 Codec

Vista UI

Product 3 Vista UI New Architecture

Product 4 Codec New Architecture

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Platform Roadmap

2006 2007 2008

Platform

Products

Tools

* Vista B1

* Vista B2 * Vista FCS

* Office Vista

* Office Online

* Vista SDK 1 * Vista SDK 2

* Visual Basic

* Briefings

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Product Roadmaps

Internal

External

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Eight Step Process for Creating a

Product Roadmap

1. Decide detail level & time to spend

2. Assess competitive moves, market and tech trends

3. Gather & prioritize requirements

4. Decide on the timeframe

5. Choose organizing strategy

6. Build Internal Roadmap

7. Get buy-in, finalize

8. Create External Roadmap

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Step 1: Detail Level & Time to Spend

• How much time do you want to spend?

• What is the shelf life

• How important is the roadmap?

(loose plan or firm commitment)

• Choose appropriate method:

– Quick & Dirty

– Mid-Level Analysis

– Full PLC solution (FeaturePlan, Accept, Telelogic, Vistarr)

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Step 2: Competitive, Market, Tech Trends

2007

1Q 2Q 3Q 4Q 1Q 2Q 3Q 4Q

Competitive

Market

Tech

Trends

* Competitor 1 expected release

* Competitor 2 expected release

Early Adopter Phase

Widespread adoption

* New technology available to leverage



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Step 3: Gather & Prioritize

Requirements

• Ideally have MRD/PRD/Backlog for next release

• Gather additional requirements

• Goal is to capture the universe of possibilities

• Scorecard/Prioritization Matrix

• Other techniques

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Feature Prioritization Matrix

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Other Prioritization Techniques

• Kano Analysis

• Four Quadrant

• Buy a Feature

• MosCOw

• Value Cost

See 280 Group Feature Prioritization Toolkit™ to

learn about these techniques and others



Step 4: Decide on Timeframe

• Quarterly

• Yearly – One

– Two

– Three

– Four

– Five

• Combination

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Step 5: Choose Organizing Strategy

• Themes

• Golden Feature

• Timed Releases

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Theme Strategy

• Find logical groupings of high scoring items

• Give groupings a “Theme” name

• Example: Performance – Launch time

– Screen refresh or data retrieval

– Time to update database

– UI responsiveness

• Bug fixes/clean up can be a theme

• Themes help resist feature creep

• May want to use sub-themes, but it weakens the strategy

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Theme-Based Internal

Roadmap

Code Name

2008 2007 2006

Code Name Code Name

Theme •Feature 1

•Feature 2

•Feature 3

•Feature 4

•Feature 5

Theme •Feature 1

•Feature 2

•Feature 3

•Feature 4

•Feature 5

Theme •Feature 1

•Feature 2

•Feature 3

•Feature 4

•Feature 5

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Golden Feature Strategy

• Choose one major feature per release as the “Golden Feature”

• Can’t ship without the Golden Feature

• All Marketing and development focus is around this

• Minor bug fixes and features can be added but are optional/nice to have

• Examples: – Revamped UI

– Launch performance

– Automatic save/recovery of documents

• Golden Feature also helps resist feature creep

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“Golden Feature” Internal

Roadmap

Code Name

2008 2007 2006

Code Name Code Name

Golden Feature •Minor Feature 1

•Minor Feature 2

•Minor Feature 3

•Minor Feature 4

•Minor Feature 5


•Minor Feature 2

•Minor Feature 3

•Minor Feature 4

•Minor Feature 5


•Minor Feature 2

•Minor Feature 3

•Minor Feature 4

•Minor Feature 5

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Timed Release Strategy

• Driven by dates, not features

• Every quarter or six months

• Gather requirements, prioritize, include as many as realistic

• If features miss a release they go with the next one

• Helps focus the team and relieve pressure to put every feature into the “Next” release

• More difficult to include new features that require significant effort

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Quarterly Timed Release

Internal Roadmap

2006 2007

1Q 2Q 3Q 4Q

Q1

Release

•Feature 1

•Feature 2

•Feature 3

•Feature 4

•Feature 5

Q2

Release

•Feature 1

•Feature 2

•Feature 3

•Feature 4

•Feature 5

Q3

Release

•Feature 1

•Feature 2

•Feature 3

•Feature 4

•Feature 5

Q4

Release

•Feature 1

•Feature 2

•Feature 3

•Feature 4

•Feature 5

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Two Year Matrix

Internal Roadmap

Q1

2007

Q2

2007

Q3

2007

Q4

2007

Q1

2008

Q2

2008

Q3

2008

Q4

2008

Code Name or

Product Name

Target Market

Major Features

or Theme

Technology Trends

Competitor’s

Products

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Step 7: Fine Tune & Get Buy-In

• Compare against: – Competitive

– Market

– Technology

• Internal customers – Meeting needs

– Timing & priorities correct

• Engineering – Feasibility & completeness

– Match for resources

– Vision

• Sales – Customer needs

– Competitive

• Management – Vision

– Financials

– MBOs

• Support – Top issues & customer satisfaction

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Poll: How Often Do You Use

External Roadmaps With

Customers?



Step 8: Create External Roadmap

• Use Internal Roadmap as basis

• Remove features

– Leave Theme names or Golden Features

– Possibly keep next release features

• Put appropriate caveats

– Confidential

– Plans may change

• May not want to put specific dates

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Project Code Name

2006

Project Code Name

2007

Project Code Name

2008

Theme •Possible Feature 1 (be vague)

•Possible Feature 2 (be vague)

•Possible Feature 3 (be vague)

Theme •Feature 1 (be vague)

•Feature 2 (be vague)

•Feature 3 (be vague)

Theme

Company Confidential: Not for Distribution Note: this is a forward-looking roadmap for product plans as of 3.2006 that may change over time

Three Year “Theme-Based”

External Product Roadmap

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Multiple Product Line Roadmaps

• Use 8 step procedure for each product line

• Gather information about all projects

• Rank projects using matrix

• Determine where the cutoff line is

• New projects/significant changes: rank again

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Prioritizing Multiple Projects

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Multiple Product Lines

(With Acquisition & End of Life)

2006 2007

Foxtrot 3.0

FoxAcq 4.0

FoxAcq 4.1

Acquired Prod 7.2

Legacy Prod 11.1

1Q 2Q 3Q 4Q 1Q 2Q 3Q 4Q

EOL

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Using Multiple Roadmaps

Together

• Start with Visionary

• Develop Competitive, Market & Tech Trends

• Create Internal

• Create External

• Compare to ensure internal & external are

consistent with the assumption in the others

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Best practices

• Collaborate early with team

• Always use code names

• Release as uneditable PDF file

• Internal = More Specific

• External = More Vague

• Don’t forget:

– International

– Minor dot releases

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Summary

• Background

• What is a Roadmap?

• Types of Roadmaps & Uses

• 8 Step Process to Create a Product Roadmap

• Best Practices

www.aipmm.com



Presenter:

Brian Lawley CEO & Founder

@brianlawley

[email protected]

www.280group.com

+1.408.834-7518 x1

Q&A

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How To Build A Highly Effective Product Roadmap

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Transcript of How To Build A Highly Effective Product Roadmap