Product Roadmaps in the Self-driven Car Age

Leandro Pinter started as a graphic designer. Moved into software development, consultancies and Digital Agencies. Worked on CBA, ING – Agile Delivery & Transformation and Tyro, the leading the Digital & Data engineering.

The Roadmaps were initially created to inform stakeholders when major upgrades were coming so they could plan their purchases months in advance.

The characteristics of a Product Road Map are:

• Deliverables
• Dates
• Priorities

Purpose

1. Ensure team’s focus on the highest business value first 
2. A way to see and track commitments

Defects

1. Output focused
2. Data’s seen as hard commitment
3. Tied to Annual planning
4. It implies certainty
5. Misused as a release plan
6. It doesn’t embrace learning

An alternative to traditional Product Roadmap

“A product Roadmap describes how you intend how you intend to achieve your product vision”

Product Roadmap Components

Company/Product Vision & Strategy
Product Vision is your high level, ultimate view of where the company or business line is going. Product strategy is a sequence of product or releases we plan to deliver on the path to realise the product vision somewhere between 3-5 years out

1. Qualitative and inspiring 
2. Set by leadership

Company/Product Goals

This is first Business Goal you have to achieve on the way to your longer term vision

1. The most important challenge that will help you get closer to your vision 
2. Somewhere between 1-2 years out

Themes

Themes are the key areas the team decided to explore in order to achieve the Company Goals

1. Hypothesis/Problem Statement – if we solve this problem or prove this hypothesis we will be closer to achieving our company goals 
2. Outcomes – the most important part of the roadmap – it describes quantitatively what we hope to achieve by solving this problem

Product Roadmaps

Should

• Tie to Company Vision 
• Focus on delivering value 
• Commit to outcomes 
• Get customers excited 
• Create alignment to goals 

Should not

• Make promises your team can’t deliver 
• Require wasteful upfront design and estimation 
• Be conflated with a Release Plan

How to get started

• Understand your context 
• Get buy-in from key stakeholders 
• Start small and experiment 
• Measure & Learn

Vision & Goals

• Tie your Roadmap to your company
• Commit to Outcomes rather than outputs
• Broad timeframes over commitment
• A Roadmap is not a Project Plan
• Empower your teams