Recently I spent some time as a caretaker product manager for an agile delivery team.
Delivering someone else’s roadmap to someone elses timeframe, within a product area I knew little about, with a team of whom I knew the names, but little else. Not the ideal situation, but I did get some fresh insights, into a scaled agile dilemma, which as a coach, I think I have some times missed.
The scene
The team was one of five working on the same overall product, each team accountable for a specific scope/goals and prioritising their own roadmap.
It’s well documented that teams work…
A minor rant about product roadmaps
Development teams and product managers are talking (and doing) lean development, rapid prototyping, and early validation — yet when it comes to visualising the product roadmap it doesn’t tend to show. Here we still look at schedules for delivering features. In particular, when we communicate to stakeholders and senior stakeholders, we tend to revert to what we think they understand/want, rather than showing them how it’s done.You might argue, that it doesn’t really matter that the roadmaps are just big feature blobs. If we are working in a lean way — who cares, right? I disagree — a lot!
Roadmaps…
Sofie Jensen
Agile + Lean Consultant — and opinionated Dane.
