Building better product roadmaps | Janna Bastow (Mind the Product, ProdPad)
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.