roadmap – the way to do it successfully

Roadmap – The Way to Do It Successfully

Harri Pendolin, Prodman

Market Insight conference

13th of November 2014, Stockholm

“A product roadmap is a

high-level plan that

shows how a product is

likely to evolve.”

Roman Pichler, agile product management and Scrum expert

“An artefact that

communicates the direction

you’ll be going in order to fulfill

the product vision.”

Janna Bastow, Co-Founder, ProdPad

“An evolving plan of product releases, with brief

descriptions of their themes and features. The

roadmap is intended to realize the product

vision and satisfy goals and objectives.”

Gottesdiener and Gorman,

Discover to Deliver

2014 Roadmap - The Way to Do It Successfully

What Is a Roadmap?

Where Will It Take You?

“If you don't know where you are

going, any road will get you there.”

Lewis Carroll, writer of Alice in Wonderland


Three horizons planning framework

Roadmap - The Way to Do It Successfully 2014

Horizon 1

Horizon 2

Horizon 3 Operative targets

Strategic themes

or focus areas

Vision

Time

Money

Three horizons - three different needs for market insight!

Horizon 1 – Can we deliver what we planned? P

rod

uct

1 Release 1.1

Release 1.2

Release 2.0

Mark

eti

ng

Advisory boards

Launches

Events

Pro

du

ct

2

Cloud 1.0

Asian version

Cloud beta

3Q/15 2Q/15 1Q/15 4Q/14 3Q/14


Outcome over Output


Operational efficiency Customer satisfaction

Interoperability requirements, user

experience, attraction, price,

adoption rate, positioning,

packaging…

Market Insight

Project time table and deadlines

Budget

Quality

Process requirements

Operational goals

Three things to keep in mind in Horizon 1

1. Customers before processes

2. Customer insight is not the same than

market insight

3. Every market and product has its finite

lifecycle


2010 2011 2012 2013

Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4

Horizon 2 – Are we working on the right

solutions?

Justin Musica Smart phone without phone

GigaP The best screen on the market place

Traditional Affordable MP3

player for kids

Laggard Me too phone for big masses

Police Durable basic version

for authorities

The Last Mohican For conservative PC

users

Conqueror First version of the

Android tab

No name Very small version

for athletes

Hip All colors for young

adults


My roadmap used to look like this…


Release 1.2

• Feature 1

• Feature 2

• Feature 3

• And lot more small

features customers

and sales guys had

asked

Release 1.3

• Feature 31

• Feature 32

• Feature 33

• And the rest of the

features R&D

though they could

squeeze in

Release 2.0

• Faster feature 1

• Unclear feature 2

• Great internal idea 3

• All the features our

competitors had

• Feature 4 Gartner

thought would be

needed

• And every other

feature anyone had

ever requested

1Q/02 2Q/02 3Q/02 4Q/02 1Q/03 2Q/03 3Q/03 4Q/03 1Q/04 2Q/04

Release 1.21

• Some bug fixes

which we already

knew will be

needed because of

the too tight

schedule Horizon 2

The Challenge with Horizon 2 -

Customers don’t know what they will

need!!


Pretotypes and MVP’s


Lean Startup


Ideas

Build

Product

Measure

Data

Learn

Market Insight

Even Apple keeps testing all the time!


It's a process where they discover the product

through constantly creating new iterations. A lot

of companies will do six or seven prototypes of a

product, because each one takes time and money.

Apple will do a hundred -- that's how many they

did of the Macbook. Steve Jobs doesn't wake up one

morning and there's a vision of an iPhone floating in

front of his face. He and his team discovered it

through this exhaustive process of building

prototype after prototype.

Horizon two roadmap shall consist of

strategic themes based on market

insight and the chosen strategy.


Horizon 3 – Do we have vision about future

markets?

2020 World leading provider of - 3D printing ecosystem utilization - Autonomous vehichles - Virtual personal assistants .

2019 Steady growth continuous in areas of - Prescriptive analytics - Sw-defined this and that - 3D bioprinting

2018 Applications for big data utilization - Enterprise 3D printing – aaS - Cloud computing for 3rd world thru mobile

2017 Start of the new era: - Data gathering capabilities for big data. - Consumer 3D printing - aaS - Cloud computing apps


“If everything you do needs to work on a

three-year time horizon, then you are

competing against a lot of people. But if

you're willing to invest on a seven-year time

horizon, you're now competing against a

fraction of those people, because very few

companies are willing to do that.”

Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon


What do these companies have in common?


Product management today …


Product

Marketing

Product

Planning Buyer User

Our

company

Eco-system

(partners) Business

modeling


How to create a roadmap

The onion model


Vision

Product

Strategy

Tactics

Roadmapping is team work


Getting started


1. Describe the current product

Picture by Prodpad

Getting started



2. Gather needs and

ideate

Picture by Prodpad

Getting started



2. Gather needs and

ideate

3. Group the ideas

to themes

4. Prioritize and create

your roadmap

Picture by Prodpad

Continuous and iterative process


Vision (Yearly)

Strategy (quarterly)

Tactics (continuously)

A good roadmap…

is…

Value-driven

Evolving

An informative

communication tool

A shield against reactive

product development

(sales promises, loudest

voice, “higher orders”,

complaints)

is NOT…

Commitment

Project/release plan

A wish list

Out-dated


Roadmap presents the insight YOU provide to

the company


Strategic

Operative

Developers

Leadership team

Sales and Marketing



Listen to your

customers!



Test your

assumptions!

Picture by Mikko Jäppinen, Palmu Inc.



Find the right

problems!


Kiitos!

Tack!

Thank You!

Harri Pendolin

[email protected]

www.prodman.fi

roadmap – the way to do it successfully

Presentations & Public Speaking