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The document provides guidance for product managers on prioritizing a product roadmap. It discusses the importance of having a clear product vision and understanding what metrics and customers matter most. It then offers basic prioritization strategies to help get a roadmap on the right track, including focusing on the most important customer needs and not trying to do everything at once.

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Ishvinder Singh
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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
43 views44 pages

Test

The document provides guidance for product managers on prioritizing a product roadmap. It discusses the importance of having a clear product vision and understanding what metrics and customers matter most. It then offers basic prioritization strategies to help get a roadmap on the right track, including focusing on the most important customer needs and not trying to do everything at once.

Uploaded by

Ishvinder Singh
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Get Your

Priorities Straight!
A Practical Guide to Smart Roadmap
Prioritization for Product Managers

FEATURE 2

FEATURE 3

FEATURE 4

FEATURE 5

Q2

Q3

Contents
03

Introduction

05

Before You Begin

14

Get Your Priorities Straight

32

Feeding Your Roadmap


a Balanced Diet

41

Conclusion

Introduction

reating and maintaining a product roadmap is undoubtedly the product management task most fraught with
difficulty and unpleasantness. Since most product man-

agers do not possess psychic abilities, figuring out what to build


first (and second, and third) is a truly challenging part of the job as
theres no secret recipe, no scientific formula, no one size fits all
approach to building a winning product roadmap.
With every feature you slot into the front of the queue you are pushing many other items out. Do you focus on really big, high-impact
features or do you prioritize getting a whole bunch of little ones
out the door? Do you focus on features aimed at attracting new
customers or satisfying the ones you already have? Do you invest in
the platform or rack up more technical debt that must eventually be

addressed? The list of questions goes on and on, but rest assured
that you are not the first person facing these seemingly unanswerable questions, nor will you be the last.
This eBook aims to provide some practical guidance and advice
for product managers whove arrived at the intersection of product
management as a dark art and product management as a science
and have found themselves facing some tough decisions as they
map out the next leg of their products journey on their product
roadmap.

What to Expect
This eBook provides INTRODUCTORY-LEVEL information for prod-

uct managers who are looking for help prioritizing initiatives on their
product roadmap, or who simply need a refresher course on the
subject. In this eBook, well address:
Important prerequisites for roadmapping such as defining a clear
product vision, understanding the metrics that matter most to your
product, and gaining a good understanding of your customers.
Basic prioritization strategies you can apply to get your roadmap on
the right track while keeping your team in the loop.
How to maintain a healthy roadmap (and product!) over time by
avoiding common pitfalls like technical debt and feature bloat.

01
Before You Begin
Understanding the Major Influencers
Behind Every Roadmap Decision

Get Your Priorities Straight!

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Before You Begin


Understanding the Major Influencers
Behind Every Roadmap Decision
Your product roadmap should define your products journey over
time and highlight important milestones throughout that journey.
A good product roadmap tells a story about where your product
came from and where its headed in a way that helps your team,
stakeholders, and in some cases, your customers, understand
what youre up to. As is a prerequisite for most adventures, youll
need to have a destination in mind, a means of traveling to that
destination, and a compelling reason to embark on your journey
before you can hit the road.
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Where Are You Going?


The Importance of Product Vision
Do you know where youre going with your product? If you dont
have a destination in mind, youre sure going to have a hard time
building a map that will take you there. Theres not much point in
trying to prioritize items on your roadmap if you dont have a clear
product vision. Your vision is the guiding force behind every decision
you make in your products lifecycle; and your product roadmap is
the navigation tool youll use to find your way; it dictates the direction your team will be going to reach that vision.

If you dont have your product vision, dont bother with


roadmapping. Stop right there, go back to the beginning and make
sure that you understand what you guys are building towards, why
youre in this. If you dont have your product vision, youre either
as far as youre going to get already or youre going to end up
somewhere else completely unexpected, and you dont want that.
J A NNA B A STOW ProdPad

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Dont Have a Vision?


Heres some inspiration from successful companies
and products youre probably familiar with:
To build the simplest and most powerful social media tool,
and to set the bar for great customer support...

Uber is evolving the way the world moves. By seamlessly


connecting riders to drivers through our apps, we make
cities more accessible, opening up more possibilities for
riders and more business for drivers.

For business email users who want to better manage the


increasing number of messages they receive when out
of the office, BlackBerry is a mobile email solution that
provides a real-time link to their desktop e-mail...

To capture and share


the worlds moments

To connect the worlds professionals


to make them more productive
and successful.

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Dont Forget: Product Vision Should Align with


Business Strategy
Before you break out those dry erase markers and start roadmapping: remember that your vision must align with your organizations
strategic goals and business strategy in order to be effective and
ensure you have buy-in from everyone involved with making your
product successful inclusing sales, marketing, support, development, and all the relevant stakeholders.

You can come up with the most beautiful vision for your product.
But its useless if the people involved in making the product a
success dont buy into it. To leverage the vision as the products true
north, to create alignment, and to facilitate effective collaboration,
the product vision must be shared everyone must have the same
vision. Without a shared vision, people follow their own goals
making it much harder to achieve product success.
- ROM A N P I C HL E R Pichler Consulting

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How Are You Getting There?


Minding Your Metrics
Once your company is moving full speed ahead toward your grand
plan, youll discover that certain actions have a greater impact on
your progress than others; some initiatives will drive your product
toward where you want it to be at a faster pace than others, while
some initiatives will appear to have no observable effect. Having a
grasp on what these levers or metrics are should be a prerequisite
to any prioritization activity.
The key metrics you monitor will vary throughout your products lifecycle as business needs change and priorities evolve. For example, if

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your product or company is in a growth stage, metrics that measure


things like Acquisition, Retention, and Referrals may be at the top
of your list; and as your product matures, your priorities will likely
shift to also include moving the dial on Sales and Revenue metrics
and monitoring Churn (and diagnosing its cause).
Youll want to monitor metrics every step of the way as theyll help
you identify and solve problems and make more informed roadmap
decisions. Meanwhile, a keen awareness of the metrics your organization is most focused on at any given time can help you prioritize
initiatives that will help move your KPIs in the right direction.

...Every business is different and if you dont define and agree


your priorities up front you risk optimising for the wrong thing, or
nothing at all. Pick the 3-5 levers that you can affect and that will
have an impact on your business, and then pick measures of these
levers that are trackable, actionable and distinct.
MARTI N E R I KSSON Chief Product Officer, Covester

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Why Are You Going?


Customers Are Your #1 Priority
Customer retention is the holy grail of business, and dont you ever
forget it! Without customers, you dont have a product or business,
so if you want to keep them (happy), its in your best interest to serve
their needs.
Your customers should be the why behind your product vision
and at the end of the day there shouldnt be anything that goes on
your roadmap that doesnt help soothe customer pain and solve
their problems. Maintaining customer focus within your roadmap
also means not wasting your teams valuable time and resources on

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features that will have no impact. Investing time into meticulously


prioritizing your customers needs and coming up with real solutions
to real problems is the best possible way to keep your product in
tip top shape.
Getting to know your customers and their problems before you start
trying to solve them is a wise move. So if its been a little while since
you last connected with your customers, or since you last looked at
their feedback, now might be a good time to reconnect.

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02
Get Your Priorities
Straight!
Basic Prioritization Strategies
to Get you on the Right Path

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Get Your Priorities


Straight!
Basic Prioritization Strategies to
Get you on the Right Path
Now that you know where youre going, why youre going there,
and how youll track your progress along the way, you can finally get
to the fun part: beginning your journey. Before you start sprinting
toward your destination, youll want to carefully plan the first leg of
your adventure.

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T W EET
THIS

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Your product shouldnt try to do


everything and neither should you.

There are only so many hours in a day and only so many resources at
your disposal, and for the last time: you simply cant do it all. Much
like managing your own time and prioritizing items in your day-today to-do list will ultimately help you be more productive; prioritizing the features you roll out, the UI tweaks you make, and other
roadmap initiatives will help you better distribute the resources you
have available for the maximum impact.
Every product team will have its own unique strategy for prioritizing
roadmap initiatives, and that strategy will be influenced by multiple
things beyond product vision and key metrics such as company and
product culture, development cycles, and beyond. That being said,
theres a few techniques you can consider working into your teams
process that will help you make better roadmap decisions, including
considering the impact theyll have on customers, facillitating collaborative roadmapping sessions with your team, plotting initiatives
on a matrix, and building a minimum viable feature in instances
where youre unsure about an initiative.

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The Doctor is In
Start by Diagnosing & Curing Customer Pain
Empathy is one of the most important skills in product management.
As a product manager youre responsible for not just knowing your
customer, but also understanding their pain, and solving it. This
means knowing the problems they face and providing solutions that
cure the most pressing pain first.
Feedback and complaints are excellent sources of information about
customer pain, if you use them to properly diagnose the pain. In
some cases, the prescribed fix is obvious; theres a bug and theyd
like to see it fixed. In other cases its a little more difficult to pinpoint

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customer pain; feature X isnt living up to expectations, or I want


these new color and display settings added to my control panel.
In the latter example your job is to dig deeper to unveil the root
problem causing the pain. What is your customer trying to solve?
Once youve discovered the pain point at play, you can look at how
much pain its causing your customers and use that as an indicator
of what customer request your team should solve first.

How it Works
Lets say your customers say they want extra display settings added
to the control panel and you determine that they want those extra
settings because theyre are having a hard time reading items in
the control panel. Youve identified a pain point and diagnosed the
problem causing the pain, so your next step would be to determine where the solution to the pain should be on your roadmap. In
many cases, youll want to run some more tests to determine how
severe the pain is and how frequently it occurs before you prescribe
treatment.

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Youd want to first gauge the severity of the problem: Is it the vast
majority of customers or just a small percentage of customers being affected? For those affected, how hard is it to use the control
panel? Youd then want to determine the frequency of the pain: do
customers use the control panel every day? Or just periodically?
After youve done a triage of your customers pain, youll have a
better idea of what product areas could use work most and can use
this as a preliminary prioritization tool. If the pain is both severe and
frequent, the solution is both urgent and important, so put it first.

TWEET
THIS

Once youve discovered the pain point at


play, you can look at how much pain its
causing your customers and use that as an
indicator of what customer request your
team should solve first.

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The Matrix Approach


Prioritizing by Impact & Effort
Time is money, and when you decide to tackle a project, youre
essentially budgeting your available assets, and in doing so, (hopefully) preventing yourself from overpromising on what your team
can deliver in any given time period. That being said: Not all features are created equal (nor are bugs or platform enhancements).
As a product manager it is NOT your job to scope out how many
man-hours everything will take (unless you work for a type of company where it somehow IS your job, in which case you have our
sympathies).

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As a product manager it is NOT your


job to scope out how many man-hours
everything will take
However, when youre creating your roadmap and prioritizing items
for specific releases, youll need to have at least some idea of how
big each item is. Here lies one of those tricky fuzzy lines that are a
regular occurrence in the life of a product manager.
On one hand, you could ask your project manager, scrum master,
engineering head, or tech lead how long they think something might
take and depending on your team dynamics they might give you a
ballpark idea using fun Agile metrics, or they could drag you into
hours of meetings that net you a result with so many qualifications
that the answer is next to useless.
On the other hand, you could just guess, which for some roadmap
items might not be the worst move in the world, though for most
large or complex items its not a great idea.

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A popular exercise for categorizing potential features based on resources is a matrix system. This is best done in a group setting as
it can help you and your team quickly decide which features are
worth it and which features arent without getting into the nitty
gritty of man-hours or story points.
Collaborative roadmapping exercises give participants insight into
how the sausage is made, which will come in handy down the line
when people are looking at the finished product and wondering why
their pet feature ended up in Q4 instead of Q3.

How it Works
Gather your team and any other relevant parties and go through
the features youre trying to make sense of one-by-one, working together to determine how much effort each will require to implement
and gauge how much impact each will have (more power to you if
you can use customer data to help estimate impact). Once youve
made these estimates, youll plot the initiatives on a matrix and use
it as a visual tool to help you identify the best opportunities for your
team to pursue.

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Impact & Effort Matrix

IMPACT

High Impact
Low Effort

High Impact
High Effort

BEST IDEAS

Low Impact
High Effort

Low Impact
Low Effort

WORST IDEAS

EFFORT

High Impact, Low Effort


These are your best ideas, theyre easy to tackle yet have high impact potential, theyre quick wins for your product.
High Impact, High Effort
These ideas will move the needle, but are major projects that will
require serious time and effort--theyll also require further thought
from you and your team about where they belong on your roadmap.

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Low Impact, Low Effort


The little things. These ideas arent tons of work, but arent particularly important, either. They make good projects for your team to
pick up between larger ones or on an whenever its convenient
basis.
Low Impact, High Effort
Your worst ideas. These tasks involve a lot of work but barely move
you toward your vision and goals--these arent high priority, if theyre
priorities at all.

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Dealing with Uncertainty


Taking the Minimum Viable Feature Approach
What about when you cant measure or estimate the expected impact of an initiative? Sure you can leverage data, conduct market
research, talk to customers, and use this research to make estimates
about the impact of a feature, but there will always be a level of
uncertainty in your results.
So lets get hypothetical here for a moment: You believe that adding
customization features is going to improve usage and adoption of
your product, but youre not sure about how much improvement
you can expect and dont really have a way to calculate it, there are

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Planning and forecasting are only accurate when based on a long,


stable operating history and a relatively static environment.
- E R I C R I E S The Lean Startup

simply too many factors to control for. Through brainstorming sessions and customer roundtables youve netted 17 different settings
that should be added to the product, which will require a decent
chunk of effort for your team to develop and launch.
With so much uncertainty around whether this big project will actually help your product, its a tough call how high-priority this feature
should be and whether its a feature worth adding at all--how do you
make that call? Well, do you need to implement all 17 of them to see
whether this enhancement is going to move the needle? Probably
not.
Instead, you can borrow from the Lean Startup principles Ries outlines in his book and take the minimum viable product approach at
the feature level. Start by selecting one or two customization options
that your preliminary research shows will be popular and implement
those as smaller chunks of work in an upcoming release. Then, use
your predefined KPIs to prove (or disprove) your hypothesis that

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adding new customization options will get you more customers or


usage.
This build-measure-learn tactic will help you get more net-new features into a given release while conserving development resources
for work that has a proven value. Its a great approach if you have lots
of features to sift through and lots of uncertainty (i.e. lack of data)
about how well theyll perform. Launching an MVF is a great way
to validate whether you should continue building the feature out
fully or leave it alone because you wont waste precious resources
(like your dev teams time) on features that end up being ignored in
the end.

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Cleaning up your Backlog


What to do with the features and initiatives
that are always picked last
Once youve been managing the same product for a while you will
likely notice the same feature, or more likely, features, getting left
off your up next list time after time. Chances are, these features
are still floating in your backlog for one of two reasons:
1. They require too many resources to implement.
2. They arent expected to have enough impact to justify building.

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You can probably throw the ones that fall into that second bucket
out--you are likely never going to have extra resources and the list of
things you want to put on your roadmap is only going to get longer. If you
cant demonstrate the value of those
features now, you most likely wont be
able to down the line either--unless, of
course they pop up again in the form
of customer requests, in which case
youll have an opportunity to revisit
and reassess them.
The items that belong to the first category, however, can be some
of the most challenging for product managers to prioritize. Sure,
theyre important, but perhaps they dont seem urgent or dont want
to push off everything else on your plate to get them done, so these
features often wind up rotting away in your product backlog. Rather
than put off a decision, why dont you dig a little deeper and ask
yourself this: Is this an item your organization HAS to do or simply
WANTS to do?

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When its a resource intensive want to do, you really need to build
out the business case to determine whether its a worthy cause. If
after building out the business case you determine that it is indeed
a worthy cause, then your organization may want to reallocate resources on hold to tackle the initiative.
Surprisingly, its the the have to do items that are the trickiest because its inevitable that youll have to take care of them sooner or
later. The worst possible outcome is that the have to do project
suddenly becomes a have to do NOW project and ends up taking
up everyones time at an inopportune moment when you have a
closing window of opportunity for something else.
Liken this to your dentist telling you at a checkup that youll need
your wisdom teeth out...eventually. Youre left with two options: 1.
Put the procedure off until your wisdom teeth start growing in and
causing such excruciating pain that you have to reschedule your
family vacation to go get them taken out, or 2. Have them removed
at your earliest convenience, and despite being out-of-commission
for a few days, not missing your family vacation or other important
events.

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Its best to take care of these have to do items at your convenience and on your own terms, rather than leave them looming in
the background of your product backlog because it allows you to
have a bit more control.
When you uncover a have to do item in your backlog you may
have an opportunity to take the minimum viable feature route
before you dedicate lots of resources to it. If you cant make it into
a MVF, and its not yet an urgent have to do item you, break the
project down into smaller parts to incorporate as part of your next
two or three releases. No one wants to be the product manager
making their entire dev team spend three months on platform upgrades and database migrations, but if its a have to do, sooner
is almost always your best bet.
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03
Maintaining a
Healthy Roadmap
Feeding Your Roadmap a Balanced Diet

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Maintaining A
Healthy Roadmap
Feeding Your Roadmap a Balanced Diet
It can be tempting to load up your roadmaps near-term releases with projects and features that all aim to do the same thing so
you can meet a short-term goal. It can also be difficult to resist the
temptation to cram in as many shiny new toys as possible; theyre
fun to spec out, they get customers and sales teams excited, and
they usually have some positive revenue implications.

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TWEET
THIS

Dont let shiny new toys and short term


goals blur your product vision.
But you cant let those short term goals and shiny objects distract
you from whats important. The fanciest new feature wont do anyone any good when your site is too slow, your servers are down or
your COGS is too high because you havent done the maintenance
work that all companies need to factor into their development plans.
Avoiding technical debt, among other common product focus pitfalls means embracing a roadmap that covers all your bases; customer requests, maintenance, updates, bugs, business needs, and
so on.
One way to ensure your roadmap has a healthy mix that takes care
of all of these needs is to use the bucket approach--categorizing
your initiatives into several buckets and making sure every release
has a balance of items from each category. For example, maybe
customer requests live in one category, technical and infrastructure
needs belong in another, and strategic items go into their own.

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Wealthfront CEO, Adam Nash, says he favors categorizing items into


three buckets: Requests, Metrics Movers, and Customer Delight; a
mix that ensures his roadmap stays in shape and every sprint or development cycle maintains a healthy balance of initiatives that cover
customer needs, product vision, business strategy, and technical
needs while also making time for experiments and innovation.
Theres another benefit as well; the bucket strategy helps ensure
teams are transparent about their reasoning when they choose to
add a new feature. If a feature is added to your product roadmap
but doesnt serve an important purpose, it will stick out.

Ive found that categorizing features into these buckets forces


product teams to be intellectually honest with why they are
implementing a certain feature. Is it because customers want it?
Or is it because the company wants it (to move metrics)?
Or is it just cool?
A DA M NA SH Wealthfront

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Validate Feedback Before Building


Just Like Fine Wine, a Customer Request
Improves With Age
It can be tempting to prioritize customer requests above everything
else because, after all, the customer is always right and the customer is paying your salary, but when you have to wade through
feedback and requests from customers, stakeholders, support, and
sales, you have to use discretion and do your due diligence on the
actual value add of acting on each request. Just because one customer requests something doesnt mean you have to build it.

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If your product roadmap is dictated by whatever a customer said in


the most recent sales call, your product development organization
will be constantly jerked around, function very inefficiently, and
suffer from poor morale and retention. Plus, a single sales rep will
pitch to multiple customers in a quarter, leading to conflicting input;
sales reps typically overestimate the probability and speed that their
accounts will close, leading to wasted effort on accounts that dont
produce revenue; and you probably have multiple sales reps who will
be giving conflicting input.
ER I C KR OC K LifeMap Solutions

Be sure you dont jump the gun on feedback. When you allow customer requests to simmer for a bit, you give yourself the opportunity to collect feedback from more customers and validate whether
the request is worth acting on and whether the customer who first
requested the feature still wants it the next time you talk to them.
Getting away from knee-jerk prioritization is key to any successful
product strategy. Customers also dont always know what they need;
they may know what they think they want, but they rarely know what
is actually possible and they have a very limited perspective (their
own). You should be looking at the entire market, not just listening
to feedback from the vocal minority.

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Avoid Feature Bloat


Dont Overpack your Product with Extra Bells
and Whistles
On its own, a new feature can seem like a great idea -- One more
thing to make our customers happy! -- however, most products
dont exist in a vacuum, and everything you add into the mix adds
weight and has implications on everything else your product already
does. Features dont come without a price, and investing in adding a
new feature means budgeting for more than just development and
implementation. New functions and features come with complexity
costs for customers and often require ongoing maintenance to keep

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them healthy and ensure that they arent getting in the way of your
products core function.
Its all about striking the right balance between features and functionality and maintaining focus on your product vision. You should
always consider whether something new has the potential to take
away from something you already have thats working great, because
it can sometimes be hard to remove functionality once people get
used to it.

Its not about ten features versus seven, its about the right four
versus the wrong eight (or the right eight versus the wrong four).
Its also about the right place and the right time to reveal the right
features. Every feature, widget, or interface control competes.
Loading up the screen with stuff that is used 10% of the time means
the stuff thats used 90% of the time has to fight for attention.
Thats not a good experience. The experience should be light,
flowing, and comfortable, not heavy, clunky, and frustrating.
J A SON F R I E D Basecamp

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A Word on Healthy Competition


Dont Let Competition Distract from Vision
(or Dictate Roadmap Decisions)
Finally, you certainly cant simply ignore the competition, but dont
let them prioritize things for you. If your product has direct competitors, it can be easy to fall into catch-up mode as they churn out new
features that make your salespeople anxious, but dont fall into the
features arms race with your competitors.
Sure its important to be competitive, but constantly adding new
bells and whistles just to match the competition will ultimately distract you from your long-term goals.
Instead of trying to keep up with your competitors new releases and
functionalities, use them as a source for inspiration - they chose to
solve a customer problem with Feature X, but are there other (and
better) ways to solve it?
You should also remember that very few competitors are competing
for the same exact customers with the same exact value proposition
and your products overall position may not be threatened or jeopardized by the other companys new widget.

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Conclusion

hen the dust settles, your roadmap should tell a story

about your products journey, or more accurately, you should be able


to tell a story that matches up with your roadmap.
When you roadmap you are essentially dividing up your products
journey toward your vision, or long-term goal into chunks, or legs,
and each leg of your journey should help you accomplish the interim
goals you need to get to that final destination.
A great roadmap is built while keeping a laser focus on achieving
your product vision and business goals while monitoring key metrics and serving customer needs. When your team looks at your

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roadmap they should see that the most important issues are being
addressed and have a better perspective of the scope of the various
things involved in the care and keeping of a successful product.
If your vision is clear and your navigation skills are successful, your
roadmaps audience will gain a deeper appreciation of what your
team is working on; theyll see that both todays work, tomorrows
tasks, and sprints during the weeks and months to come build toward something significant. If you remember to focus on pursuing
your vision, solving customer problems, and constantly taking the
path with the greatest impact, youll have an easier time getting
where youd like to be and getting team buy-in to your plans.

42
uservoice.com

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Get Your
Priorities Straight!
A Practical Guide to Smart Roadmap
Prioritization for Product Managers

B Y HE ATHE R M C C L OSKE Y
Inbound & Content Marketing Manager, UserVoice
Heather McCloskey is a former broadcast news producer turned product
managment & marketing nerd. When shes not researching or writing, she
can be found putting pedal to the metal behind a sewing machine or
painting watercolor comics.

2015 UserVoice, Inc

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