A roadmap is not a strategy

Sep 1

Sep 1 A roadmap is not a strategy

As my role has evolved over the past 10 years from a individual contributor to a leader of product teams my view of the importance of roadmaps & product strategies have also evolved, and lately, while interviewing and talking to people about product roles, it's become clear that companies evolve from roadmaps to strategies as they mature, and I think it should be the other way around.

When a company hires it's first product manager they are often very focused on the roadmap. "We need someone who'll plan the work, who'll tell us what will come when". The roadmap for a company who's got piles of feature requests, is a huge leap forward. And with many startups that I have worked at, and that I talk to, this is a very common approach. There are many types of roadmaps: dates, themes, technology focused, you name it. It's a key part of software delivery.

But nailing the "roadmap" is all fine and good (and important), without a product strategy it's really just a collection of features with no overall direction. Here are some questions I like to ask myself:

1- What is our competitive differentiator? What makes us different than the market? Is our product a me-too or a disruptor? How can we deliver something unique to the market?

2- Why do our customers hire us? (see my jobs to be done post of last week) what pain are we solving for them? how can we deliver a product that truly solves those problems for them?

3- Where do we want to be as a company is the future? in a year, 2 years, 3 years? the long term vision of the company is key to the product strategy. Building only for today or next quarter doesn't help you make those big leaps forward.

Side bonus! Understanding that overall strategy makes Roadmap decisions very easy. Does it support the strategy? If it doesn't then why are we doing it? It's like having a ruler against by which everything can be measured.

While for many this will be a "well-duh" kind of post, it's pretty common that the roadmap comes first, and I think that is definitely the wrong order.