The practice of product management has evolved massively in the last 10-15 years. During that time, companies have learned how to use a lean roadmap to communicate strategy, and have learned how to adapt their plans to produce the best possible outcomes for their stakeholders. While product management practices are classically applied to development of software products, this presentation will outline how a roadmap can be used to communicate any business priorities and ensure everyone understands how to contribute to company success.

1. Learning from industry:
Product Management
practices for the win!

2. Why do Product Managers
exist?

3. What problem do we
need to solve?

4. How will we know
when it is solved?

5. How do they tackle the
questions?

6. Listen to the needs of their stakeholders

7. Balance competing priorities

8. Communicate priorities

9. Collaborate to refine the strategy

10. Provide leadership

11. Are roadmaps just for
products?

12. Are roadmaps just for
products?
No!

13. ● Liz Love, Chief Customer Officer @ ProdPad
● ex-PM (10 years, corporate, SME, startup)
● First PM a couple of times
Introduction

14. Why do we need a roadmap?

15. The goal of a roadmap is to
reduce business risk

16. “The roadmap is a
prototype for your
strategy”
Janna Bastow
CEO and Co-founder of ProdPad
Co-founder of ProductTank and Mind
the Product

17. Talk about outcomes,
not output

18. Ditch the timeline roadmap

19. Designed to fail (and not in the good way)
JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC

20. Time
Thingstodo
Designed to fail (and not in the good way)Designed to fail (and not in the good way)

21. Time
Feature A
Thingstodo
Designed to fail (and not in the good way)Designed to fail (and not in the good way)

22. Feature A
Thingstodo
Time
Feature B
Designed to fail (and not in the good way)Designed to fail (and not in the good way)

23. Feature A
Thingstodo
Feature B
Time
Feature C
Designed to fail (and not in the good way)Designed to fail (and not in the good way)

24. Feature A
Thingstodo
Feature B
Time
Feature C
Designed to fail (and not in the good way)Designed to fail (and not in the good way)

25. Thingstodo
Time Due dates & duration
ALL
THE
THINGS!
Designed to fail (and not in the good way)

26. Thingstodo
Full of assumptions
Time
ALL
THE
ASSUMPTIONS!

27. The grand assumption:
Nothing’s going to change.

28. “Efficient and with no wastage”

29. Lean Roadmap

30. Lean Roadmap

31. Lean Roadmap

32. Separate strategy
from execution

33. Product Backlog
Ideas, suggestions, insights
• Ideas and suggestions
• ‘Fuzzy’, incomplete specs
• Not approved
• Not prioritized
• Can be large
• Open to whole team
Development Backlog
Tickets, bugs, dev-ops tasks
• Small, self-contained specs
• Estimated in size
• Approved for development
• Prioritized
• Should be short
• Mostly just for developers

34. Support experimentation

39. Encourage psychological safety

40. How might we?

41. How might we?
I bet…

42. So, how does good PM
practice benefit the business?

43. Reduce distractions
● Priorities are aligned
● Unnecessary work can be put on the back burner
● Teams are more focused

44. Increase visibility
● What’s coming down the pipeline?
○ Do we have enough resource?
○ Do we have the *right* resource?
● Explain the “why”
● Justify the decisions - what are you saying no to, and
why?

45. Bring everyone along for the ride
● Investors
● The board
● Executives
● Business operations
● Customers

46. Do the right things, the right way
● Defined as problems
● Solutions designed by experts
● Consistent processes

47. Encourages collaboration

48. Better decisions,
better outcomes

49. Do the right things

50. Cost of change is lower

51. Innovation is easier

52. Better alignment
with business goals

53. The goal of a lean roadmap
is to minimize business risk

54. Q&A

55. Want to know more?
● Slides - bit.ly/liz-love-pm-ftw
● www.prodpad.com/events/agile-on-the-beach-2019/
@lizzielove liz@prodpad.com

56. @lizzielove liz@prodpad.com