Building better product roadmaps | Janna Bastow (Mind the Product, ProdPad)
This episode features Jana Bastow, co-founder of Mind the Product and inventor of the Now, Next, Later roadmapping framework. She discusses building and maintaining communities, essential public speaking techniques, and her "spicy takes" on roadmapping, advocating for a flexible, problem-focused approach over traditional timeline-based Gantt charts.
Deep Dive Analysis
15 Topic Outline
Janna Bastow's Career Background and ProdPad Origin
Building and Sustaining the Mind the Product Community
Challenges and Risks of Running Product Conferences
Strategies for Improving Public Speaking and Storytelling
Techniques for Managing Performance Anxiety
Critique of Traditional Timeline-Based Roadmaps
Introduction to the Now/Next/Later Roadmap Framework
Implementing Soft vs. Hard Product Launches
Key Traits of High-Performing Product Teams
The Role of Retrospectives in Team Learning
Approaches to Changing Product Culture in Large Companies
How ProdPad Reinforces Good Product Practices
Experimenting with the Now/Next/Later Framework
Geoffrey Moore's Product Vision Template
Advice for Product Managers Becoming Founders
5 Key Concepts
Roadmap as a Prototype for Strategy
A roadmap should not be a fixed plan, but rather a dynamic prototype used to check assumptions about problems and solutions. The value lies in the ongoing roadmapping process of laying out assumptions and validating them with stakeholders, rather than the static document itself.
Now/Next/Later Framework
A product roadmapping approach that replaces fixed timelines with three flexible buckets: 'Now' (what's being worked on currently, weeks away), 'Next' (near-term, less granular, months away), and 'Later' (future, highly flexible, further out). It allows for flexibility and acknowledges the cone of uncertainty, while still allowing specific dates for regulatory or critical deadlines.
Soft Launch vs. Hard Launch
A strategy to separate the technical release of a product from its marketing and sales push. A 'soft launch' is when developers release a feature, allowing for testing and iteration, while a 'hard launch' is a later, planned marketing campaign based on a functional product, giving marketing teams time to prepare effectively.
Psychological Safety
An environment within a team where members feel safe to question each other, speak up about issues, and challenge senior-level decisions without fear of negative consequences. It underpins effective retrospectives and allows teams to learn, iterate, and improve continuously.
Culture as Calcification
An analogy describing how company culture, especially in larger organizations, becomes deeply ingrained and resistant to change, much like limestone buildup. It suggests that change cannot happen all at once but requires chipping away at small pockets or divisions over time, with buy-in from leadership.
10 Questions Answered
Success comes from a grassroots approach, focusing on sharing, collaborating, and learning together, alongside consistent effort like holding regular meetups and events. Surrounding yourself with the right people who help curate and contribute is also crucial.
Conferences are expensive, unlean, and highly risky, with mistakes often costing thousands of dollars (e.g., catering issues, speaker cancellations, venue problems). They require immense logistical effort and are difficult to insure against, making profitability challenging, especially for smaller events.
Learn by observing effective speakers, work with a speaker coach to refine content, posture, and delivery, and record yourself practicing. Start by outlining your story and narrative first, then fit it into slides, rather than starting with PowerPoint.
Use power poses (e.g., hands on hips) to boost confidence, get onto the stage early during tech checks to familiarize yourself with the space, and identify friendly faces in the audience to focus on during your talk. If you stumble or blank, take a deep breath and just start again; audiences are generally rooting for you.
Timeline roadmaps force every item to have a due date or duration, which is often inaccurate, especially for future plans, as uncertainty increases over time. This leads to missed deadlines, pressure to cut quality, or excessive planning that slows down development.
It replaces fixed timelines with three flexible buckets ('Now,' 'Next,' 'Later') that reflect the cone of uncertainty, allowing for less granularity further out. This provides flexibility, reduces the pressure of arbitrary deadlines, and focuses on problems to solve rather than specific features by specific dates.
Separate the 'soft launch' (when developers release a feature) from the 'hard launch' (the planned marketing and sales push). This allows marketing to prepare based on a functional product, gather testimonials, and plan a more impactful launch at their own pace, while development continues working on the next items.
Top-notch teams prioritize discovery, constantly asking questions of customers and iterating based on feedback. They also foster psychological safety, allowing team members to question assumptions, speak up when things are wrong, and learn from each other through practices like retrospectives.
Geoffrey Moore's product vision template (also known as the elevator pitch template) can be used: 'For (target customer) who (statement of need or opportunity), the (product name) is a (product category) that (reason to buy). Unlike (alternative), our product (statement of differentiation).'
PM roles provide many relevant skills and expose you to various business functions. Don't let perceived lack of knowledge stop you; you'll figure things out as you go. Surround yourself with advisors for different challenges, be ready for unexpected bumps, and take things one day at a time.
37 Actionable Insights
1. Roadmap as Strategy Prototype
Treat your roadmap as a prototype for your strategy, not a fixed plan, to check assumptions and gather feedback, as the value lies in the iterative roadmapping process itself.
2. Embrace Experimentation Accountability
Frame product development like sales, seeking investment for a team to run experiments (e.g., interface changes, pricing tweaks), accepting that some will fail but enough will succeed to move metrics. Be accountable for the experiments run and money spent, rather than predicting specific outcomes.
3. Prioritize Discovery and Psychological Safety
Build top-notch product teams by focusing on continuous discovery (asking customers, iterating) and fostering psychological safety, enabling team members to question, speak up, and understand cross-business dynamics.
4. Approach Culture Change Incrementally
View organizational culture change as “calcification” that must be chipped away incrementally over time, rather than attempting to fix it all at once.
5. Initiate Culture Change in Small Pockets
To change culture in large companies, start by identifying and empowering a small, well-led team or “startup lab” to adopt new ways of working, allowing them to demonstrate success and gradually influence other sections of the company.
6. Avoid Universal Timeline Roadmaps
Do not use timeline-based roadmaps for everything, as they prematurely assign due dates or durations to items that are uncertain, leading to missed deadlines and unnecessary pressure.
7. Separate Soft and Hard Launches
Implement separate soft and hard launches: developers release a product when ready (soft launch), then marketing and sales plan their major campaigns based on a functional product, reducing stress and improving campaign quality.
8. Conduct Regular Retrospectives
Implement regular retrospectives to foster psychological safety, enabling teams to openly discuss what’s working/not working, learn from each other, and make concerted efforts to improve their processes.
9. Build Community with Consistency & Sharing
Foster a community by consistently showing up (e.g., monthly meetups, annual events), encouraging sharing, collaboration, and learning from each other, and keeping it grassroots.
10. Curate Your Community Network
Actively seek and involve people who will help sustain the community, maintain consistency, and attract more valuable contributors and members.
11. Leverage Community for Content & Speakers
Empower community members to help curate content, find speakers, and contribute to the wider picture, extending beyond your immediate network.
12. Build Community as Conference Marketing
To successfully sell conference tickets, build a strong community over several years by running consistent monthly meetups, which serves as your primary marketing strategy.
13. Strategically Plan Date-Driven Projects
For projects with non-negotiable deadlines (e.g., regulatory, seasonal), allocate extra project planning and buffer time, aiming for completion well in advance to allow for soft launches, iteration, and fixes before the final release.
14. Use Tools for Better PM Practices
Utilize product management tools like ProdPad that enforce better practices by prompting thoughtful questions (e.g., problem, outcome, success measurement) before and after work, making it harder to revert to less effective methods.
15. Start Now, Next, Later Simply
Implement the Now, Next, Later roadmap framework simply using physical tools like Post-it notes, focusing on ordering problems and validating them with others.
16. Share Early Assumptions Widely
Share your early strategic assumptions (e.g., about problems to solve) with your team and customers to validate your path and gather feedback for adjustments.
17. Maintain Regular Communication on “Now” Items
Ensure regular communication with stakeholders, especially about items in the “Now” column of a roadmap, to provide a clear sense of immediate priorities and upcoming work (likely weeks away).
18. Reduce Launch Stress with Separation
Separate soft and hard launches to alleviate the stress of trying to perfectly align distinct marketing and development project timelines, which often leads to failures.
19. Learn Public Speaking by Observation
Improve public speaking skills by observing many other speakers, noting what works and what doesn’t, to develop a taste for good presentations.
20. Utilize a Speaker Coach
Engage a speaker coach to refine your talk, including script, jokes, storytelling, posture, delivery, and phrasing, to significantly improve your presentation quality.
21. Record and Rehearse Your Talks
Record yourself and play back your presentations (even if you dislike your voice) to identify areas for improvement, and rehearse until you can deliver the talk flawlessly in various settings, building confidence for large audiences.
22. Prioritize Story Over Slides
When preparing a presentation, begin by outlining your story points and narrative first, then fit them into your slides, rather than starting with slides and trying to force a narrative.
23. Use Power Poses for Confidence
Before speaking, use a power pose (e.g., hands on hips) to boost confidence and feel better, regardless of scientific backing, as it can be effective as a placebo.
24. Familiarize Yourself with the Stage
Get on stage during tech checks to walk around, look at the empty audience space, and imagine it full, which helps you get used to the environment and reduces stress on the actual day.
25. Focus on Engaging Audience Members
During a talk, identify and focus on audience members who are actively nodding and smiling, speaking directly to them to maintain engagement and boost your own confidence.
26. Embrace Imperfection in Speaking
If you make a mistake or feel nervous while speaking, take a deep breath, restart where you left off, and remember that the audience is generally supportive and wants you to succeed.
27. Leverage PM Skills for Founding
Recognize that product management provides a strong foundation for becoming a founder or CEO, offering exposure to various teams and business underpinnings.
28. Build a Diverse Advisory Network
As a founder, surround yourself with a diverse network of advisors, identifying specific individuals to consult for different types of problems as they arise.
29. Don’t Delay Founding Due to Inexperience
Don’t let perceived lack of knowledge prevent you from starting a business; trust that you will learn and figure things out as you go, as many others have done.
30. Use Elevator Pitch for Product Vision
Adapt Geoffrey Moore’s “Crossing the Chasm” elevator pitch template to define your product vision, answering key questions about target customer, need, product category, reason to buy, and differentiation.
31. Avoid Running Conferences (If Lean)
Be aware that running conferences is expensive, risky, and “unlean,” making it difficult for product people who prefer iterative approaches due to the high stakes and inability to easily fix issues.
32. Ensure Conference Ticket Sales
Recognize that underselling tickets can financially break a conference, so ensure sufficient attendance to avoid failure.
33. Recognize Event Management Stress
Understand that event management is highly stressful due to numerous simultaneous responsibilities and high financial risks, which can lead to significant pressure.
34. Avoid Over-Planning All Launches
Do not apply extensive, date-driven planning to all launches, as it leads to either rushed, low-quality products or excessively slow development cycles.
35. Read “Art of Profitability”
Consider reading “Art of Profitability” as a recommended book for valuable insights.
36. Listen to “Startups for the Rest of Us”
Tune into “Startups for the Rest of Us,” Rob Walling’s podcast, for insights tailored to bootstrapped or alt-funded startups.
37. Ask “What problems are you looking to solve?”
Use “What problems are you looking to solve?” as a favorite interview question to understand a candidate’s motivation and problem-solving mindset.
5 Key Quotes
The value isn't in your roadmap. The value is in the roadmapping process.
Janna Bastow
Honestly, no one is rooting for you to fall over and have a bad time. Everyone's rooting for you to finish your point and get on with it.
Janna Bastow
If it's a placebo, hey, don't tell me that it works. Honestly, I feel better at the end of it and get on stage and do a better job.
Janna Bastow
Retrospectives make such a big difference because they are indicative of psychological safety, which underpins so much, right?
Janna Bastow
People less capable than you have figured it out.
Janna Bastow
2 Protocols
Public Speaking Preparation and Delivery
Janna Bastow- Start with story points and narratives, then fit them into slides.
- Work with a speaker coach to improve jokes, stories, posture, and delivery.
- Record and listen back to your talk for refinement.
- Practice the talk flawlessly multiple times (e.g., in the shower, walking).
- Perform a 'power pose' (e.g., hands on hips) before going on stage.
- Get onto the stage early during tech checks to familiarize yourself with the space.
- Identify and speak to audience members who are nodding and smiling.
- If you stumble or blank, take a deep breath and just start again; the audience is rooting for you.
Now/Next/Later Roadmap Creation (General Approach)
Janna Bastow- Identify the problems you need to solve.
- Lay out these problems in order (Now, Next, Later).
- Share these early assumptions with other team members and customers.
- Adjust the roadmap based on feedback, treating it as a 'prototype for your strategy.'