Managing Products with Agility [P1]: Managing Products with Agility/Forecasting and Release Planning - Tips for Agile product roadmaps & product roadmap examples

Question 1

Who creates a roadmap?

Answer 1

PO

Question 2

What is a roadmap?

Answer 2

• high-level, strategic plan
• describes the likely development of the product over the next period of time
• should support the products’ purpose and vision

Question 3

Benefits of roadmap

Answer 3

• makes it easier to coordinate the development of different products
• fosters transparency in order to manage customer expectations
• helps the Product Owners to keep their stakeholders aligned

Question 4

What is the problem with having roadmaps dominated by features?

Answer 4

• creates lack of focus on the vision and goals
• turn into an overloaded product backlog, instead of a high-level, strategic plan for the products’ future development

Question 5

What are three popular road-mapping styles?

Answer 5

1) Goal Oriented product roadmap (GO product roadmap)

2) Now-next-later roadmap

3) The story map

Question 6

Explain how to do Goal oriented (GO) product roadmap

Answer 6

To create a Goal Oriented (GO) product roadmap, follow these steps:

1. Define the overall goals and objectives of your product.
2. Break down these goals into specific initiatives or themes that align with the vision.
3. Prioritize these initiatives based on their importance and feasibility.
4. Map out a timeline for each initiative, indicating when they will be worked on.
5. Communicate the roadmap to stakeholders and regularly update them on progress.

By following this approach, you can create a roadmap that is focused on achieving specific goals and objectives, rather than just listing features.

Question 7

Benefits of Goal oriented product roadmap

Answer 7

• focus - goals over features
• supports you in thinking about the most valuable features that enable the achievement of your goals
• get an overview of you products’ development over the next upcoming releases - helps manage stakeholders

Question 8

Should you leave dates off a Goal oriented product roadmap?

Answer 8

• If you think it helps with managing stakeholder expectations and interpretations - depends on context
• stakeholders see dates in the roadmap (which were forecasts from PO POV) and they concluded that they would certainly receive the functionality on the date that was in the roadmap

Question 9

Explain the now-next-later product roadmap

Answer 9

• visualizes roadmap easily for everyone
• now, next and later are easy to understand
• Good to combine with the GO product roadmap

Question 10

Cons of now-next-later product roadmap

Answer 10

• focused more on the features, rather than the goals/objectives you would like to achieve as a Product Owner
• model doesn’t offer much room for including KPI’s, releases or dates (important info for stakeholders) - BUT potentially an PRO if you want stakeholders to not take the date as an exact delivery date

Question 11

Explain story mapping

Answer 11

• create a nice overview of all the features you and your stakeholders can think of, which will be important to your product
• not an unlimited list of features
• provides an overview of all the user activities that need to be covered by the system, which in turn enables you to create small and valuable user stories
• starts with the user activities, and thus taking a users’ perspective on the product → helps you with brainstorming about the product from a users’ perspective

Question 12

Cons of story mapping

Answer 12

creates the illusion that all the features for the product will be developed - need to manage stakeholder expectations

Question 13

Tips for agile product roadmaps (11)

Answer 13

1. Start with your product vision (tip: use[Roman’sProduct Vision board]
2. Describe and validate your[product strategy]
3. Focus on goals and benefits, by creating a[goal oriented product roadmap] (or one of the other types I’ve explained before);
4. Tell a coherent story about the likely growth of your product and don’t oversell it;
5. Keep it simple! Resist the temptation to add too much details to your roadmap;
6. Actively collaborate with stakeholders to ensure buy-in;
7. Have the courage to say no, to prevent an overload of features in your roadmap;
8. Think twice about adding timelines, dates or deadlines to your roadmap;
9. Make sureyour roadmap is measurable, by adding measurable goals and KPI’s;
10. Createa rough estimate for each feature (#people + required skills) to determine the viability of a feature;
11. Review and adapt your product roadmap on a regular basis.