Roadmapping 301Advanced Roadmapping Class

Bruce McCarthyChief Product Person, Reqqs

bruce@reqqs.comwww.reqqs.com@d8a_driven

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I’m Bruce McCarthy, Founder and CPP of Reqqs - the smart roadmap tool for product people. I’ve been in product management for 17 years at companies like iMarket (bought by Dun & Bradstreet) and ATG (bought by Oracle). My day job currently is VP of Product at NetProspex in Waltham.

I’m here to talk about how to develop roadmaps that stick. This is the advanced class because you guys are well beyond the basics of H-M-L.

I developed this methodology over time in various jobs. I’ve seen it work over and over again where gut instinct or endless meetings fail. In talking with other product people, I’ve found the good ones usually develop something similar. I’ve really just tried to standardize it and genericize it a bit so everyone can benefit.

Do roadmaps still matter?

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In today’s agile world, do roadmaps still matter? Aren’t we allowed to change direction after each sprint? Actually, I think roadmaps are needed even more in an agile world. Yes, you can correct course after each sprint, but you should be correcting course toward something - toward a vision of where you want your product or your company to be in a year or 2 or 3. You need to stake out that vision and then you need to work out what you think is the best path to get there. That’s your roadmap.

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Your roadmap is also a shield against the constant onslaught of potentially diverting requests from all quarters.

“Did [Previous PM] send you his spreadsheet of [5 trillion un-prioritized] feature requests?”

- VP Product Management

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In my experience, large spreadsheets of past feature requests are not usually worth the time to review. Anything really important will come out in customer or other stakeholder conversations

“We need this to close [big deal] this quarter!”

- Key Sales Person

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I know a VP of Product who reserves about 5% of his dev team’s capacity just for these things.

“37% of our Support calls are about [oldest, hairiest part of the code].

Can’t we fix it?”- Support Manager

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This is a tough one because it’s so reasonable. Look at the ROI on these requests carefully, though, as they won’t help with new customer acquisition and they will suck up your most senior resources for an extended period.

“[Shiny tech thing] will make [your top priority] much easier!”

- Tech Lead

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Make them prove it with a schedule for your top priority with and without the shiny tech thing.

“[Previously irrelevant competitor] just shipped [shiny feature]. How are

we going to leapfrog them?”- VP Marketing

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I’ve always preferred to solve market problems before marketING problems. Your prospects may not pay nearly as much attention to your competition as you do.

“We gotta drop everything and work on [meaningless buzzword]. It’s

gonna be huge!”- VP Sales

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I’ll talk in a little while about how to roadmap around “transformational items”

“If you don’t support [obscure platform] I can’t buy your stuff.”

- Key Customer CTO

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Just say no. I used to have the job of determining which 3rd parties to support. It’s really a very simple job. I figured out that it cost about $1 million per year to add a new supported platform to our testing matrix. That made the ROI decision really easy. We only ever made an exception once for a multi-million dollar deal.

“You can’t add [my pet idea] without dropping something else? What, is

your whole team lazy?”- CEO

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This is my favorite - actually heard - CEO quote. And *proof* that CEOs are bad at math.

Roadmaps Inspire

Buy-in from execs

Stick-to-itiveness and over-delivery from your team

Confidence from Salespeople & customers

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A lot of that confidence is about your company and your product, but a lot is also confidence that *you* know what you’re doing

5 Roadmap Pillars

1. Strategic goals2. Objective prioritization3. Shuttle diplomacy4. Transparent themes5. Punctuated equilibrium

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Strategic Goals

“A strategic goal is used to define the desired

end-state of a war or a campaign.”

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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SMART Goals

SpecificMeasurableAttainableRelevantTime-bound

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Your goals usually come from your CEO or your executive team. Strategic goals help you prioritize projects. More tactical goals are what gets your projects approved. Revenue is nearly always on the list. It’s your job to take what they give you and translate them into “SMART” goals.

SMART goals are: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-bound

Typical GoalsGrow the user baseIncrease customer satisfaction Improve performanceIncrease referralsValidated learningIncrease revenue this yearTransformation (revenue in future years)Generate buzz

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A tip for when your CEO asks what you are doing that’s “transformative” or “paradigm-shifting” is to think of it as things that won’t generate significant revenue this year but have a chance to grow it a lot in future years by entering new markets or serving new needs.

I’ve never been able to get away without including some kind of “coolness” or “buzz factor” goal for anything but internal projects. If you skip that, someone always complains that we’re not taking into account that we need to generate excitement in the market to be successful.

Pick 2-4 goals

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If you try to pick one goal, there will always be people (including you) wanting to cram in “just one or two other little things.” If you pick too many, there is no focus to your project and it’s really hard to prioritize.

But if you pick somewhere around 3 goals, you get a more balanced view and it’s easier to prioritize.

5 Roadmap Pillars

1. Strategic goals2. Objective prioritization3. Shuttle diplomacy4. Transparent themes5. Punctuated equilibrium

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Popularity

Your CEO’s Gut

Sales Requests

Analyst Opinions

Most of your customers are small

He’s no longer in touch with the market

These change every week

These are mostly backward-looking

Objective Prioritization is NOT

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Math makes (almost) everything better

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There is a better way.

Value / Effort = Priority

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A simple equation. It’s really the familiar ROI calculation. Effort is the investment you make to generate value in return. The items in your backlog that have the highest ROI are the ones you should do first, right?

Value / Effort = Priority

Value = Estimated Contribution to Defined

Goals

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Feature G1 G2 E P

A 1 1 2 1

B 1 0 2 0.5

C 2 -1 1 1

(Goal1+Goal2)/Effort = Priority

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Removing the QA step to ship early means negative numbers for quality (G2)

There is a lot more detail on this prioritization methodology in my Prioritization 301 presentation on SlideShare and at www.reqqs.com/resources

5 Roadmap Pillars

1. Strategic goals2. Objective prioritization3. Shuttle diplomacy4. Transparent themes5. Punctuated equilibrium

PP

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Henry Kissinger was Nixon’s Secretary of State and famously settled things down in the Middle East after the 1967 war using shuttle diplomacy.

Shuttle Diplomacy

“Serving as an intermediary among

principals in a dispute, without direct principal-to-

principal contact.”From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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This is probably THE most important part of the process. You need to get buy-in from your key stakeholders for your roadmap to be approved and to stick over time. The best way I have found to do this is to meet with them individually.

Typical Stakeholders

You

Your boss

SalesTech lead

Customers Partners

C-suiteLegal

SupportAnalysts

Architects Other PMs

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When I showed this slide to my wife, she said: “Why you still you’re job I don’t know, but it does explain all the beer.”

“I’ve got a draft set of priorities. Would you help me refine it?”

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Don’t go to them with a finished set of goals and priorities, but ask for their HELP and INPUT in the process. Make the process transparent to them, invite them into it and you’ll get a much better reaction.

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“I’ll present our priorities to the executive

team on Friday”

Collaboration

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When you collaborate on the development of your plan with your key stakeholders, a magical thing happens. “Your” plan becomes their plan, too. This makes the big review meeting with the execs to approve your roadmap more of a formality because everyone around the table had a hand in putting together the plan.

5 Roadmap Pillars

1. Strategic goals2. Objective prioritization3. Shuttle diplomacy4. Transparent themes5. Punctuated equilibrium

PPP

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Transparent Themes

“A group of features tied together by a simple, clear benefit, usually to the user”

From Bruce’s Product Person Dictionary

32You’ll see in a minute what I mean by “usually”

Themes Are Vague

High-level, few wordsMake the benefit obviousMany details rolled up Cut features & still declare victory!

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Yes, they are vague on purpose. Clear in benefit - but vague in implementation.

You can decide to cut specific features within a theme without dropping the theme itself. This helps you manage expectations and preserve the roadmap in the face of shrinking budgets, shifting resources and slipping schedules. It allows you to publish a roadmap months out that you can show to execs and even to customers and still feel confident you can deliver.

If someone asks about a specific feature within a theme (does Easier Scheduling include popup calendars?), your answer should be: “We’re looking at the best way to make scheduling easier as soon as we can. Popup calendars is something we’re looking at but I don’t want to pre-judge exactly how it will come out.” It’s like the President saying “all options are on the table” about Iran.

Typical Themes

Simpler WorkflowFaster CheckoutBetter SchedulingSocial ConnectionsReferral ProgramNew Platform

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Benefits to customers are things like the first three. Many individual features or tweaks to the UI would roll up into these themes.

The next two are more like epics, large features with lots of parts you might keep or cut depending on how the schedule goes. These are valid for the roadmap, too, as long as your stakeholders see the value in them.

Something infrastructure or engineering-oriented like a new platform, API or refactoring can appear on your roadmap. My bias for customer benefit would argue against it, but if it’s going to leave a large hole in your roadmap because it’s necessary and it eats up a lot of time, then you should include it on an internal roadmap (never an external one). At worst, it will prompt a healthy discussion of whether the work is worth the investment.

Cutting a theme needs an explanation

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The essential difference between a feature and a theme is that you can usually cut a feature without drama, but cutting a theme requires an explanation at the executive or customer level. A theme is what’s visible on your roadmap, so publish that with caution.

Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4

Theme A Theme C Theme D Theme E, Phase II

Theme B Theme E, Phase I Theme F

Theme G

Weaselly Safe Harbor Statement

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5 Roadmap Pillars

1. Strategic goals2. Objective prioritization3. Shuttle diplomacy4. Transparent themes5. Punctuated equilibrium

PPPP

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Punctuated Equilibrium

“A theory that evolution proceeds with long periods of relative stability interspersed

with rapid change.”

Webster's College Dictionary

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Change your roadmap every couple of cycles

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Roadmap Change

People expect itYou probably didn’t ship everything you wanted toThe market situation has changedYou have more informationExecs have ADD

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Lather, rinse, repeat

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How do you change your roadmap? Start over at the beginning.

5 Roadmap Pillars

1. Strategic goals2. Objective prioritization3. Shuttle diplomacy4. Transparent themes5. Punctuated equilibrium

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Ask if your strategic goals are still correct then re-prioritize the things you haven’t yet done, get buy-in, roll up to themes... and you’ve got a revised roadmap to publish.

Related Topics

1. Internal vs. external roadmaps2. Revenue recognition3. Multi-product roadmaps

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Discussion

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For Slides & Excel Template

Bruce McCarthyChief Product Person, Reqqs

bruce@reqqs.comwww.reqqs.com/resources

@d8a_driven

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