- Establish a Product Vision
- Be customer-focused
- Focus on where you want your product to be (even if it’s a stretch)
- Be differentiated
- Last for a longer time horizon (e.g. 3-5 yrs)
- Be aligned with the larger organisation
- Set SMART goals
- How to set goals?
- Use framework like OKRs (with assigned ownership)
- Set company OKRs
- Set team OKRs that can drive company OKRs
- Set individual OKRs that can drive team OKRs
- Road map your initiatives
- Come up with the top initiatives that are most likely to help you hit your goals
- Initiative 1 - What is this and what are the outcomes/goals achieved?
- Initiative 2 - What is this and what are the outcomes/goals achieved?
- Initiative 3 - What is this and what are the outcomes/goals achieved?
- Initiative 4 - What is this and what are the outcomes/goals achieved?
- Define what high level scope is for each initiative
- Initiative 1 - Value : High, Effort : High
- Feature 1 - Value : High, Effort : Medium, Priority P0
- Feature 2 - Value : Medium, Effort : Medium, Priority P1
- Feature 3 - Value : Low, Effort : Low, Priority P2
- …
- Prioritise the initiatives based on impact & effort & priorities (RICE, Impact vs Effort, etc)
- Initiative 1 - Value : High, Effort : High, Rank 1
- Initiative 2 - Value : High, Effort : Medium, Rank 2
- Initiative 3 - Value : Low, Effort : Medium, Rank 4
- Initiative 4 - Value : Medium, Effort : High, Rank 3
- How to prioritise initiatives?
- Are they aligned to your vision & goals?
- Think about return on investment (ROI)
- RICE
- Value vs Effort
- Kano Model
- Story mapping - good for building MVPs
- Get a sense of release / timeline (along with engineering team)
- Forecast MVP - Minimum Viable Product
- Forecast MLP - Minimum Lovable Product
- Look at all initiatives and team resourcing and put it all together (vetted by engineering team)
- Internal document, must not be shared with customer
- Measure results
- How to measure results?
- Ensure your product has instrumentation
- Focus on your “north star metric”
- Measure against the right “customer/user segment”
- Types of metrics include
- Acquisition
- Activation
- Retention
- Referral
- Revenue
- Drive transparency by building dashboards that everyone can access
- Identify areas of improvement
- Review results with the broader team
- Iterate
- Include time for fast follows
- Any unexpected changes you want to adapt to based on user feedback
- How to iterate
- Release features early and often
- Review results from product analytics and take action
- Get customer feedback
- Setup a Beta program
- Analyse customer feedback & identify areas of improvement
- After you release, dedicate scheduled time to “fast follows” or additional milestones within the initiative
- Follow through
Tips for success
- Get started, take at least an hour a week to bootstrap your road map
- Focus on your customers, talk to them, get feedback
- Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good
- Start at the top down, everything you do should support your company mission
- Reflect regularly, spend time monthly updating the road map
- Beat the drum… align internally every month, and validate with customers anytime you can
- Document everything! It helps to use a road mapping tool!
Key takeaways
- Prioritise outcomes over output
- Align the organisation and features with your vision
- Measure results and iterate on your approach
- Don’t stay stagnant, stay fast, stay lean, stay agile and keep moving