Product Roadmaps Relaunched by C. Todd Lombardo, Bruce McCarthy, Evan Ryan, and Michael Connors is a guide for those involved in new product development, especially product managers responsible for setting the strategy and guiding the development of products. It teaches a more strategic way to use product roadmaps — providing clarity and a common understanding while avoiding over committing or getting into details more appropriately managed elsewhere.
I’ve been involved in product development in one form or another for the past few decades. Managing the process has become more structured and scientific over those years, but the most significant change has been the adoption of elements of design thinking, lean startup, and agile development. While business decision making has become increasingly data-driven and algorithmic, the reality is that what the market wants and needs is still fairly mysterious. Product developers must find a healthy balance between satisfying the desires of decision makers to predict what will happen and when, with maintaining the ability to learn what will actually succeed before rushing a new product to market. Product Roadmaps Relaunched suggests an approach for achieving this balance.
The first chapter of the book is primarily structured around common problems that are addressed by the book’s new approach to product roadmaps:
- Nobody understands why things are on the roadmap
- You are shipping a lot but not making progress
- Executives and customers demand commitments
- Marketing and sales are not selling what you are making
- Customers aren’t excited about your new features
- Your stakeholders and customers expect a firm commitment on dates for your product releases
- Time spent estimating design and development efforts takes time away from actually implementing them
- Your team looks at the roadmap as if it were a project plan listing when features will be released
In the second chapter, the authors define the key components of a product roadmap, including a product vision, business objectives, product themes, high level timeframes, and a disclaimer that all of it is liable to change at any time. The next eight chapters walk through the process of developing this new type of product roadmap. The final chapter provides readers with guidance in how to help their organizations begin to implement this new approach to product roadmapping.