Product Roadmaps
I wont be surprised if every year around this time I’m talking about roadmaps.
Simply put, a product roadmap is a high level plan that organizations use to communicate their plans to achieve their product vision. Product vision is typically driven by the Company’s overall vision.
There is no right way of building roadmaps. I have seen extremely creative roadmaps using images and colors and also black & white flat lists. You use the best (or right) tool that helps you communicate your roadmap to your audience — not one team, several teams.
The product vision at the very highest level talks about Business Objective — how are we going to make money. There is a common theme to all roadmaps and the business objectives tend to fall under two main formats:
- Outcome Based which is nothing but an overarching theme or an ability
- Feature Based which gets into specifics.
The output for both of these approach is a Product Backlog with Items (PBI) clearly structured and defined.
For example:
Business Objective: Reduce access to item by 30%
Theme: Improve Search Experience
Features: Incorporate Global Searching using keywords
For most part I like taking the outcome based approach as they are better suited for a dynamic market, and themes are less likely to change.
A Feature based approach is well suited for a mature and stable market.
Where things start to break?
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