How to Avoid Product Roadmap Traps?
Purpose of your Product Roadmap:
• A roadmap details the features and platforms for future releases over the upcoming months and years. A product roadmap reveals your current plans but is not a commitment.
• A roadmap details the features and platforms for future releases over the upcoming months and years. A product roadmap reveals your current plans but is not a commitment.
What are the traps?
• Your product roadmap becoming overly complicated and inflexible and gradually losing its sense of purpose over time.
• The roadmap is failing to reflect researched market opportunities.
• If there is no flexibility that you product roadmap fails to incorporate updates then there is a possibility that the ultimate product, which gets delivered, will not serve any purpose to the users.
How to avoid the product roadmap trap?
• Summarize the current trends: Key industry events, new operating systems and platforms, new competitors all act as market forces that should be documented in the roadmap.
• Make it audience specific: Ensure that your product roadmap is audience specific.
• Review with stakeholder: Brainstorm ideas for new product lines with key stakeholders in the roadmap.
• Optimize the format: Focus on your initial one or two product lines that the company should target over the next 1 to 2 years.
• Emphasize good Communication: While it is crucial that you need to incorporate a certain amount of flexibility about updating product roadmaps, you also have to ensure that any changes or updates are rapidly communicated to the dependent parties.
