Roadmaps

Time for this week’s Product Bite; practical insights about building and scaling products and businesses.

Hope they resonate and spark some fresh perspectives and actionable strategies!

📚 Quote: "A roadmap is a strategic communication tool, not a project plan."

🌟 Roadmaps should inspire and align teams, but they must be kept simple, visual, and intuitive and most importantly outcome, NOT feature-focused. A "now | next | later" structure provides clarity while allowing flexibility.

💡 Benefit: NEWSFLASH: Predicting the future is impossible. Creating a 1-3 year roadmap and ticking off the items at the specified time won't guarantee you hit your desired goals. Shifting to end results instead of specific features means the focus moves from 'what gets shipped fastest' to 'what objectives are achieved.' This massively improves effectiveness and increases the impact on the metrics that matter.

🧠 So what: I don’t think this insight is the most revolutionary; outcome-based roadmaps have been around for quite some time. However, where I’ve seen teams fall down is in expectation management when things change. Frequent communication about alterations to the roadmap is critical. When the roadmap changes (and it will) its entire audience needs to know to avoid confusion and maintain alignment. So, establishing a well-known and highly used feedback loop with all stakeholders is key!

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