A 2018 presentation at Business of Software: understanding your internal stakeholder motivations and drivers w/r/t roadmaps and product prioritization

1. @RichMironov
Your Audience’s Real
Roadmap Questions
(An Organizational Analysis)
Rich Mironov
Business of Software/Boston
2 October 2018

2. @RichMironov
“Why are our roadmaps
met with frustration or
boredom?”
Product Management
Wants to Know…

3. @RichMironov
“Why aren’t we
getting more done?”
“Why aren’t we more
innovative?”
Executive Team
Wants to Know…

4. @RichMironov
“Why isn’t my
strategic customer’s
feature included?”
Sales Wants
to Know…

5. @RichMironov
• Arrives every day with hundreds of good ideas
• From customers, sales, support, execs, engineers, analysts…
• Universalized from single instances
• “Everyone needs…”
Good Idea Train

6. @RichMironov
Product Investment Portfolio
visible features:
must do, upsell
-ilities:
scalability, security,
availability, usability…
test automation,
bugs, DevOps
validation, design,
sizing

7. @RichMironov
The Needs of the
Many Outweigh the
Needs of the Few
(or the One)
Product Management’s
Prime Directive

8. @RichMironov
• “On this quarter’s roadmap”
• “On next quarter’s roadmap”
• “Looking at it for next quarter”
• “Let me put that in the backlog”
• “Really good idea. We’ll look into that!”
• “Thanks for your input”
Politics/Vocabulary of Scarcity
= 90%
= 70%

9. @RichMironov
v7.0
Platforms
- iOS 9.x
- µServices v2
- TBD
Shapes Imply (Un)Certainty
Q3-19 Q4-19 1H20 2H20 à
v5.6
Tools
- Real time KVM
- CPU isolation
- Interrupt
management
v5.7
VM
- AWS mgmt
framework
- Debug tracing
- Remote launch
v6.0
Throughput
- Fast data paths
- Interleaved I/O
- < Footprint
- TBD

10. @RichMironov
• No white space
• Pressure to overload
• Optimistic
Roadmap: Current Best Case

11. @RichMironov
• No product is a perfect fit
• Roadmap is starting point for negotiation
• Most requests sound reasonable
• Each sales team strongly advocates
for its customers
Every Enterprise Customer Wants Something

12. @RichMironov
Hired, trained, rewarded, promoted for
• Persistence, optimism, single account focus
• Persuasive positioning
• Finding champions, escalating
to decision makers
Paid to subvert product plan
B2B/Enterprise Sales Teams

13. @RichMironov
“If Product just understood how important this deal is…
Every customer wants what this customer wants…
How hard could it be? Probably only 10 lines of code…
They need to be more responsive or work harder.”
“If Product just understood how important this deal is…
Every customer wants what my customer wants…
How hard could it be? Probably only 10 lines of code…
Product/Development need to be more responsive.”
The Big Lie Internal Salesmanship

14. @RichMironov
Product Investment Portfolio
visible features:
must do, upsell
-ilities:
scalability, security,
availability, usability…
test automation,
bugs, DevOps
validation, design,
sizing

15. @RichMironov
Theory: One Tiny Deal-Specific Item
this one thing
visible features:
must do, upsell
-ilities:
scalability, security,
availability, usability…
test automation,
bugs, DevOps
validation, design,
sizing

16. @RichMironov
Real Impact (One Deal)
visible features
-ilities:
scalability, security,
availability, usability…
test automation,
bugs, DevOps
validation
this one thing

17. @RichMironov
Cumulative Impact
visible features
validation
sales-driven
-ilities:
scalability, security,
availability, usability…
test automation,
bugs, DevOps

18. @RichMironov
• No hidden capacity
• XOR
• We picked market-
winning features
• Need political support
to defend roadmap
Product Response

19. @RichMironov
• Explicit “specials” budget
• Keep score
• Sales VP shares scarcity
Magic Bullet?

20. @RichMironov
1. See the pattern: roadmap conflict is about
irreconcilable choices, not capacity or
inattention
2. Deals consume innovation… then quality…
then planned features and infrastructure
3. Track aggregate impact
4. Share trade-offs and scorekeeping with Sales
leadership
5. Architect products for project-based partners
Executive Takeaways

21. @RichMironov
Rich Mironov
Mironov Consulting
San Francisco, CA
www.mironov.com
+1-650-315-7394
rich@mironov.com
@richmironov