Product Management thinking and bite size learning

What is a Roadmap?

Product Managers are often requested to build out a roadmap. Our first response should be ‘Which Roadmap?’. We identify three roadmaps:

1. The Visionary Roadmap – A broad brush view of where your products need to go over the next 5/10 years based on market mega trends. It sets the direction of travel.

2. The Product Roadmap – It takes the vision and breaks it down into tangible customer deliveries . It defines how value will be delivered and identifies the major landmarks on our journey to our vision

3. The Technical Roadmap – It adds detail. It describes how we get to each major landmark identified in the Product Roadmap, the people involved, etc. It tells us how we’ll make our journey to vision.

All three clearly link together. We start with the Visionary Roadmap. Without it, our product direction can’t be set.

IKEA effect

Could you be suffering from the IKEA effect

The IKEA effect is a cognitive bias in which we place a disproportionately high value on products that we build regardless of the quality. Does your product really need a replacement strategy or a retirement plan, but you’re just too attached, and remember all the blood sweat and tears that went into it?

How to measure a PM?

How do you measure product managers?

It’s a regular question - how should I assess a product manager? My view is a simple one - don’t assess what they do, assess what they help the business achieve. There are three things that an effective product manager can help a business achieve:

These are valuable to the business and define the value of product management to the organisation.

Defining Product Success

How do you define product success?

How would you define product success? Revenue? Profit? Volume? The point is this; product success comes in many flavours that do not always directly link to a simple financial metric. A product portfolio can often be thought of as a team, where products perform different roles. Think of HP – printers make ink sales possible. Or google; its search engine is an enabler for its AdWords business. Like a soccer team would not be great if it was made up of 11 strikers, a product portfolio needs balance.

So when looking at what constitutes product success, think about the role your product needs to play in your product team.

Product Managers major tasks

What are the major tasks for a Product Manager?

We’ve built this framework that describes what we need to think about throughout the product delivery process. The 5D process defines the point in the delivery cycle (From Direct, where we set product strategy, to Drive, where we use marginal gain to enhance our in-market product), and the blocks beneath describe the major activities. The framework is a useful tool to make sure you’re not missing anything major on your journey to Product Management Excellence!

Boris the Product Manager

Boris the Product Manager

Good to see that here in the UK Boris Johnson sees the route out of the Coronavirus lockdown being guided by that classic Product Management tool; a roadmap. So, for our Prime Minister, here’s some helpful roadmap hints:

Roadmaps come in three flavours:

1. The Visionary Roadmap – A broad brush view of where you need to go. It sets the direction of travel. For Boris, I guess this is pretty simple to describe in the form of strategy strands; Lockdown over, business back to normal, people travelling, pubs open, etc

2. The Product Roadmap – It takes the vision and breaks it down into tangible deliveries . It identifies the major landmarks on our journey to our vision. This will need Boris to think a little more - take each strategy strand and work backwards (e.g. start with the target state and work out the steps needed to get there)

3. The Technical Roadmap – It adds detail. It describes how we get to each major landmark identified in the Product Roadmap, the people involved, etc. It tells us how we’ll make our journey to vision. This is how we’ll measure Boris!

All three clearly link together. Start with the Visionary Roadmap. Without it, direction can’t be set.