Season 3 - Episode 6: Product Roadmap Potholes

May 28

Product roadmaps should be the steps to realizing a strategic vision for product innovation over the coming 18-24 months, but too often they become anything but. They are often just a list of features to be built into the product. And the product planning meetings associated with the roadmaps are just exercises of pushing back timelines of existing priorities and a means to dismiss newer ideas because “we don’t have the time”. For episode 2 of our Innovation Station series we’re throwing the roadmap out the window!

Background Story

Chris here. Working at Rave, we were selling our desktop notifications feature through their sales team. I did a demo for a prospective client and during the Q&A after the presentation, the customer asked if the devices could be grouped dynamically by properties in the registry on the device. This would let the customer automatically group all the devices, so the notifications could be highly targeted and users wouldn’t receive notifications unless they were specifically applicable to them. What a great idea! We went ahead and built the feature that afternoon, and had a new build of the software ready for the client the next day. They were obviously thrilled, the deal closed, and many other clients started using that feature too.

But that feature wasn’t on the product roadmap. So technically, I shouldn’t have built it.

Instead, I should have submitted it to the product advisory board at the next bi-monthly meeting. And since the roadmap already had features to be built over the next 24 months, we’d be looking at a 2+ year timespan before the feature would be available. Yeah, I think that would be a turn off for the prospective client.

We don’t like product roadmaps.

Outline

Product Roadmaps are Too Strict
Roadmaps Focus on What’s Behind You

Busted Myths

Myth: A product roadmap is necessary to guide your development process. False, it’s much better to only plan out a few weeks at a time, and reassess your direction frequently.
Myth: Your customers demand a product roadmap so that they know what features are coming and when. False, your customers may have interest in individual features being added to your product, but making promises (that you can’t keep) with a product roadmap is a poor approach. Just ship instead.

Learnings

Product Roadmaps are Too Strict

A product roadmap is like wearing a set of blinders. Your so focused on the death march through the roadmap that you never take a moment to question whether those features make sense in the product anymore.
Roadmaps overwhelm your developers. Take it from me, I’ve been the one feverishly trying to build everything on a roadmap and eventually burning out and throwing my hands in the air in surrender. It’s not fun.
It’s a whole lot more fun to come up with an idea, and work on it that same day. There’s nothing like that feeling for a developer. “Do you know what would be cool? We should add ….. to the product. Customers would love it!”
Companies lose the ability to be agile in market as they strictly follow the roadmap.

Roadmaps Focus on What’s Behind You

From David Heinemeir Hansson : the notion that “6 months ago I knew what 18 months from now would look like” is priceless. Anyone who has developed software knows how silly this is.”
Not saying that you shouldn’t have a “vision” for your product, but you don’t need a ton of detail for how your product develops in the future. Right now is clear, and focus on what you can build and ship right now.