Het creëren van een ambitieuze en haalbare product-routekaart

Simpele technieken om een ​​productvisie om te zetten in een productroutekaart

Wat is een routekaart voor producten?

Een productroadmap is een lijst met potentiële toekomstige releases die zullen bijdragen aan de levering van uw productvisie .

Elke release moet gecoördineerde functies en functionaliteit bevatten , omdat dit het voor klanten eenvoudiger maakt om de waarde van wat u levert te begrijpen.

Met een duidelijke productvisie is een up-to-date productroadmap een nuttig hulpmiddel voor alle bedrijfsgroottes, van startups die product / markt fit willen maken, tot gevestigde bedrijven die innovatie leveren door middel van R & D met frequente, incrementele releases.

Uw routekaart voor het product moet:

• •Wees gedetailleerd genoeg dat het kan worden gebruikt om verwachtingen van klanten en collega's te beheren, zonder zich te beperken tot specifieke functies
• •Wees ambitieus genoeg dat het interesse, feedback en interactie opwekt, terwijl het haalbaar blijft
• •Geef de belangrijkste bouwstenen aan als releases die u voor uw productvisie gaat leveren

Uw routekaart voor producten mag  niet :

• •Beperk uw vermogen om functies aan uw product toe te voegen of te verwijderen
• •Impact the order in which functionality is delivered
• •Impose arbitrary dates or deadlines

In the same way that a traditional driving roadmap helps you to get to your destination without restricting you to one fixed route, a product roadmap should indicate the key steps you will take to deliver your product vision, without restricting your ability to pivot and change decisions in the future

Focus on high-level value, rather than specific features

An effective product roadmap should have a list of potential releases with broad, simple descriptions, with a single line summary sentence for each to describe the core aims. For example:

“Improved ways for customers to provide information to the portal"

Avoid restrictive, feature-based release titles, such as:

“Support CSV and Excel file uploads to the portal"

A broader release title has multiple benefits:

• •It is non-technical, and can be easily understood by colleagues and customers
• •It doesn’t commit you to specific features, as it may turn out that there is little demand for Excel uploads, or it could be out of date by the time the roadmap has been published
• •It provokes discussion — is uploading files actually the best way for users to enter their information? Are there alternatives?
• •It can be easily broken down into smaller releases should it become apparent that this release is too large

Maintain flexibility by delaying irreversible decisions

It’s important to maintain flexibility for as long as possible, so that you are able to respond quickly to demand, and to ensure that you’re always working on the most valuable tasks.

Your product roadmap should aid the delivery of your product vision, not be a burden

Customers and colleagues will want to understand your product roadmap, and how it will enable you to deliver your product vision. It’s important to share this information openly to manage expectations and ensure that everyone remains engaged, but avoid prematurely committing to the finer details to retain as much flexibility as possible.

A product roadmap is more than a restrictive to-do list

Delivering a product roadmap is not like following a cookery recipe.

A recipe tells you what to do, for how long, in what order.

As much as it would be great to be able to follow a set list of instructions to deliver a product vision, it isn’t possible due to the complexity and unpredictability of what you’re trying to achieve.

Business priorities and customer needs often change, making it impossible to accurately estimate the duration of your releases, or predict the new opportunities that will arise as the adoption of your product increases.

Rather than using a product roadmap like a recipe, I prefer to treat it like a delivery driver’s schedule:

• •We have some parcels (releases) to deliver, but the optimal order to deliver them is changeable
• •We need the flexibility to deliver more parcels (releases) than expected due to demand, or skip some deliveries where the parcels are no longer required (requirements have changed)
• •We need to react to current traffic and change the order that we deliver to make the best use of our time (reacting to feedback)
• •Committing to timeslots (dates / durations) will affect the optimal order of delivery, potentially delaying valuable items from being delivered

With this in mind, you can craft your product roadmap to satisfy both the development team, and your colleagues and customers.

Don’t miss opportunities when delivering your product vision by sticking to a restrictive to-do list

Summary

Treat your product roadmap as an unordered list of incremental releases that move you towards delivering your product vision. Keep it up to date, maintain flexibility and avoid committing to irreversible decisions before you have considered all of the available information.

Keep everyone informed so that they remain engaged and can see how your releases will keep you on the road to delivering your product vision.

Next post

Shortly, I’ll be publishing the second part of this post, which will explain how to deliver a product roadmap with frequent, incremental releases, without focusing on dates or deadlines.

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