Building an Excellent Product Roadmap with Scott Baldwin

In this episode of The Product Angle show, we talk about building an excellent product roadmap. If your role involves building roadmaps then you’ll definitely want to hear Scott Baldwin, Product Excellence Consultant at Productboard talk about the considerations that go into building a roadmap.

By the end of the episode, you’ll learn about:
– What is a roadmap?
– How do you go about getting alignment and buy-in for your roadmap?
– What should product managers aspire to in their approach to roadmap development?

Building an Excellent Product Roadmap

About the Guest

Scott is a dynamic, enthusiastic, passionate, and results-driven self-starter with 20+ years of product management experience coaching and leading teams and working with customers to deliver compelling products that improve growth, market share, and spark customer delight. He currently works at Productboard as a Product Excellence Consultant helping teams organizationally and strategically.

Key Takeaways

As product managers, we have access to limited assets and resources. Using these assets and resources we need to translate the product vision into a product roadmap.

A roadmap is a:
– Live document
– Communication tool for alignment between you and the rest of the organization.
– Tool for creating a shared understanding and creating conversations.
– Tool that shows where you are going to go and why.
– A roadmap is a hard artifact that is built around a bunch of soft conversations.

When looking at what a product roadmap is, Scott also advocates for defining what a product roadmap is not:
– A release plan
– A substitute for a lack of vision or strategy
– Built by gut and opinion
– Closed off and built in a silo
– Something you get locked into

When we asked Scott how to build a roadmap he shared Align > Prioritize > Design and Refine > Share and Communicate.

First, align on where you’re going and where you can add value – vision, strategy, and objectives. Prioritize by reviewing inputs, sharing drafts, and helping stakeholders understand the why and tradeoffs that have been made.

Design the right roadmap — timeframes, objectives/goals, features, and be open to iteration. Share and communicate to establish a shared understanding but also regularly communicate changes and outcomes

However, building a roadmap is a collaborative effort. Therefore, use this opportunity to build your soft skills to collaborate, storytelling, and building alignment with other team members. Especially, if their requests made it into the roadmap.

Show Timestamps

01:24 – Scott shares something that we cannot Google about him
04:43 – What is the role and purpose of a roadmap
11:15 – Steps to take to create a roadmap and considerations
22:20 – Getting alignment and buy-in on roadmaps
26:40 – Challenges product managers face, Productboard, and Product Excellence

Show Links

– Productboard helps product managers understand what customers need, prioritize what to build next, and rally everyone around the roadmap. Sign up for a free trial check out Productboard.
– Learn more about roadmaps on Productboard’s blog.
– Find out what Productboard thinks about roadmaps with dates on them here.here.
– Productboard’s Product Excellence Maturity Model.
– Productboard’s The Path to Product Excellence.
– Listen to other episodes of The Product Angle here.

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