In this video, we will discuss why production roadmap fail and
what steps we can take to create a successful product roadmap that is
aligned with the product vision and is supported by all key stakeholders.
Hey friends.
Welcome back to the channel.
If you're new here.
My name is Vibhor . I am an Esecutive, Agile & Leadership
Coach based in Toronto, Canada.
And this is the third video in an ongoing series where I'm trying to
simplify the process of planning, an Agile Product, starting with the product
vision, followed by Product Roadmap, Release Plan, and finally learning
how to create Product Backlogs full of effective bite-size User Stories.
So if you're a Scrum Master or an Agile Coach consider subscribing to
learn some practical, actionable, and super effective ways to be Agile.
There are timestamps available, so feel free to skip from the video.
If you feel like it.
For now let's get started.
A product roadmap is an essential document.
It aligns the high level product and company's goals to the team's development
efforts, helping them to create such features and functionalities that
generate profit for the business.
So why do product roadmap fail?
It turned out that the most common reason for product road maps failure is EGO.
Let me explain.
Most products in general are the brainchild of strong
and persuasive leaders.
The reason why they're strong and persuasive is because of
the knowledge they gathered over the years through experience.
They are the masters of their domains.
But this education, this knowledge comes with a sense of ego.
The famous, "I know it all",mentality.
This mindset, this perception about themselves makes them think
that collaborating with others on their product's, features and
timelines is a waste of time.
As a result, they rely heavily on their intuition to build product
roadmaps, but here's the catch.
Unless they are Steve Jobs, chances are that their intuition is incorrect.
After all a product is used by hundreds, if not thousands of people.
When stakes are high, then guessing the needs and demands of thousands of people
on your own is generally not a good idea.
So as Agile Coaches and Scrum Masters, if you are involved in creating a
product roadmap with a person like this, then you must route this person's
energy into a process that will ensure the success of the roadmap.
No matter how smart they are, how experienced they are, they still
need to get their ideas approved and validated by key stakeholders.
This brings us to the next question.
What makes a product roadmap successful?
To answer this question, let's create Acceptance Criteria for a roadmap.
A successful roadmap will have, one, a sound product strategy, two,
support from the key stakeholders, and three, realistic deadlines.
Let's start with productive strategy.
But what is productive strategy?
If you've watched the first video in this series that you know, that
a product vision is a future state, the final destination that you want
to achieve with the finished product.
On the other hand, a product strategy is a specific path, that you and your team
choose to take, to arrive at that final destination, to achieve that vision.
In other words, the product strategy describes the, How.
How the organization or a product team intends to achieve
the desired future state.
A sound product strategy provides a high level context for a set of activities
or milestones that you want to pursue, establishing a direct link between the
product and your company's objectives.
To create a product strategy, ask these questions.
Number one, what are the business goals and how are you
going to measure the success?
Number two, who are the target customers, what their needs are and how this
product will satisfy those needs.
Number three, who is the competition?
And what differentiates your product from theirs.
Try to have this discussion with each stakeholder one-on-one so
you can get their unbiased opinion before inviting them all to a group
discussion where everyone discusses and agrees to support the strategy.
In the first video on product vision, I showed you how you could use a
template to document these findings.
Links to that template, and other supporting documents are
provided in the description, if you're watching this on YouTube.
With a product strategy in place and your key stakeholders aligned around it,
it's now time to document your roadmap.
For simplicity's sake, we will use Roman Pichler's product roadmap, template.
The strategy we created using the vision board will fuel the roadmap discussion
with the stakeholders and help us populate the fields on the roadmap template.
Vision, and needs from the vision board, help us determine the
release goals for the roadmap.
Target groups from the vision board, help us determine the personas that
needed for each product release.
Product description from the vision board, fuels that discussion to help
determine the features and their priority, ensuring that, the product release
delivers the required business value.
Business goals from the vision board help in identifying the metrics
and key results for the roadmap.
Business goals, and Needs collectively from the vision board help in prioritizing
the features and milestones, providing us with the release dates for the roadmap.
At the end of this exercise, you will have the first draft of
your product roadmap, ready to be shared with your development team.
Your team will now use the data from the roadmap to create a release
plan with a realistic timeline.
Release plan is generally based on the availability and capacity.
And there are strong chances that you may require to change the
specifics of the roadmap based on the input you get from the team.
For this reason, I advise you to educate the stakeholders about why
product roadmaps are dynamic documents.
Product roadmap represents your organization's development
plan at a particular point in time, based on the information
available at the current moment.
Based on any new information about customers, market, and infrastructure,
you may need to update the roadmap.
Give your stakeholders a heads up so they're not met with any surprises.
So that you have it.
In the following video, we will start the creation of release plans.
The links to all the videos and resources are provided in the description.
If you like this video, then give it a thumbs up subscribe,
and don't forget to provide your valuable feedback in the comments.
I'll see you in the next video.