Brainmates - Roadmaps, Briefly Explained
16 likes5,126 views
The document explains the concept of roadmapping as a crucial planning activity for product teams, emphasizing that a roadmap is a visual plan to guide an organization towards its goals. It outlines different types of roadmaps, their importance in aligning teams and prioritizing valuable activities, and provides a step-by-step guide on creating a roadmap, from idea collection to approval and communication. Key considerations include scoring ideas based on business goals and estimating the effort required for each idea.
Brainmates - Roadmaps, Briefly Explained
- 2. Roadmapping is a planning activity conducted by Product teams.
- 3. “In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” Eisenhower
- 4. What is a Roadmap? 4
- 5. A roadmap is a visual plan that drives the organisation towards its goals.
- 6. There are many types of roadmaps…
- 7. 7 1. Product 1 product + new features + vision 2. Portfoliomany products + programs of work + vision 3. Marketingefforts across each channel + growth 4. Technologyadoption of new technology + longevity (systems) 5. Platformimprovements in the platform + innovation
- 8. What a Roadmap isn’t? 8
- 9. A long laundry list of stuff 9
- 10. Why Bother with a Product Roadmap? 10
- 11. To align team members Making sure they are running in the same race in the same direction
- 12. To prioritise activities that deliver the most customer and business value
- 13. To deliver on the business’s strategy
- 14. And achieve the business goals.
- 15. How to Create a Roadmap? 15
- 16. The steps towards a roadmap 1. Collect 2. Prioritise 3. Estimate 4. Assess 5. Re-Prioritise 6. Approve 7. Share & Communicate
- 17. Collect1 Collect ideas from various sources: • Customer service • Analysis of the market • Customer visits • Workshops • Internal stakeholders • Research • Internal strategy papers
- 18. Prioritise2 Examine and rank each idea by asking: • Who will the idea benefit? • What problem are we solving to deliver that benefit? • How urgent or important is the problem to them? • How many people share the problem? • How does the idea help us meet the business goals? • What vision does the idea drive towards? • What tangible or intangible benefits can the business gain?
- 19. Goal driven prioritisation 1. List 3 to 6 business goals. For example: • New revenue • New sales • Reduction in product costs • Reduction in customer service costs • Customer retention • Legal & regulatory 2. Score each roadmap idea to indicate how effective it will be in progressing towards each business goal. • A high number is GOOD eg 10 out of 10, • A low number is POOR, eg 1 out of 10. 3. Total the scores for each idea. • The ideas with the highest scores should be prioritised over those with lower scores. 19
- 20. Estimate3 Estimate (or guess) the effort required to develop each idea by: • Getting a team together (Engineering, UX, Product) • Assigning relative effort to each idea by using: • Expert opinion • Analogy (compares the feature being estimated with other features) • Disaggregation (splitting features into smaller pieces) • A combination of the techniques above Sources: On Roadmaps and Roadmapping; Steve Johnson, Agile Estimating & Planning; Mike Cohn
- 21. “Planning Poker” as an estimation technique 21 Source: Agile Estimating & Planning; Mike Cohn 1. Asks the estimators how much effort it would take to develop the idea. 1. Receives a deck of cards with numbers. 2. Listens to the moderator and ask questions to help determine effort. 3. Estimator selects a card that reflects effort. 4. Cards are displayed simultaneously. 5. If cards differ significantly, high & low estimators provide reason for their estimation. 6. After discussion, estimators repeat the card selection process. 7. This continues until the card values are similar across each estimator. Moderator Estimators (Developers, Testers, UX etc)
- 22. Assess4 Assess the list of ideas from the initial analysis based on the: • Value to the customer • Ability to meet business objectives
- 23. Re-Prioritise5 With more information at hand, its time to re-prioritise the ideas and create the roadmap by: • Re-ranking the ideas based on: • Effort & time (magnitude) versus customer & business value (direction) • Some ideas may require significantly less effort to deliver but may produce less value than another idea. You might rank this one over one that delivers enormous value but takes considerably more effort to deliver.
- 24. But don’t wait to get it ‘perfect’ Or you will never get started
- 25. Approve6 Get approval for the roadmap from: • Your manager • Those in charge of strategy • Those that manage the company’s purse strings • OR, through the annual planning process
- 26. Share & Communicate7 When the roadmap has been approved, create a ‘show and tell’ version and share with: • The team that helped with the estimation of the ideas on the roadmap • Other internal teams (Marketing, Customer Service) • External stakeholders (Suppliers, Partners, Customers)
- 27. “I’m okay with sharing the roadmap… as long as clients and sales people know that the roadmap is a plan and not a commitment.” Steve Johnson
- 28. Connect with Brainmates 28 Brainmates Group @Brainmates #prodmgmt Facebook.com/Brainmates www.brainmates.com.au info@brainmates.com.au + 61 2 9923 8147