Unveiling the Broken Roadmap: Red Flags and Pathways to Success
Welcome to my 1st post on substack! this is indeed my 1st post here but its not my 1st time blogging or posting an article, I’ve been doing this on and off for years (I actually started blogging about entrepreneurship and startups since 2005, and more recently on my newer website/blog, but still very much on and off.
My intention and plan is to dedicate time and share at least 1 post per week and slowly but consistently ramp up the number and expand it to more posts and more content, but lets not get ahead of our selves and for now, get to the topic of today’s post, ROADMAPS!
The product roadmap serves as a crucial guide for organisations, outlining their strategic initiatives and plans for success. However, it's disheartening to admit that the majority of product roadmaps are broken, hindering progress and stifling innovation. Even my own experiences have shown me the flaws within my roadmap processes. In this article, we will explore 30 red flags that indicate a broken roadmap process, shedding light on the pitfalls to avoid and offering insights into how to cultivate a successful roadmap.
Deciding Inside Four Walls: You don’t have a product researcher, and PMs didn’t talk with customers before building a roadmap. This is what I call "deciding inside four walls".
Top-Down Ideation: A significant % of feature ideas are coming from founders or leadership. If you don't have a bottom-up process to ideate solutions, you're narrowing creativity, and features are decided by those further from the customer.
The Isolated Room of Planning: PMs having to "lock themselves in a room" to prepare the roadmap. If your roadmap isn't a fluid discovery process based on what you've been learning, you're doing it wrong.
Stakeholders Left Out of the Conversation: Stakeholders having to "lock themselves in a room" to prepare the roadmap. If your stakeholders wait for roadmapping season to discuss their strategic needs, instead of having ongoing conversations, you're missing out on delivering value quicker.
Exclusionary Private Sessions: Founders/Leadership wanting a "special private session" to discuss the roadmap for themselves. This is troublesome for a number of reasons and can be a topic of its own, but in short, if a team has done their job in coming up with their roadmap (customer and data input, opportunity sizing done and engineering and UX input taken on board or ideally was part of the entire ideation) these sessions especially when items are enforced with following the “proper process” will frustrate the team as well as the PM, feedback to get the perspective of LT is absolutely fine of course.
Mismanaged Expectations and Lack of Trust: After communicating your roadmap, leaders that "didn't get what they wanted" start privately (or even publicly) arguing against your decisions. When this happens, you not only mismanaged expectations, but there is no trust in your process.
Frequent Tweaking: A few weeks after presenting the roadmap, you are already "tweaking" it. It's ok to learn and change your roadmap, but this should happen post-discovery/shipping, not because "suddenly something new came up".
Features First, Outcomes Later: Roadmap showing features first (or worse, only showing features), instead of outcomes > problems > opportunities > solutions.
Surprises, in terms of strategic themes: Your roadmap should be a reflection of ongoing initiatives, tied to outcomes/OKRs. If something is a surprise, you're probably going off-track.
A lack of reflection from the latest roadmap, on what was delivered and learned. If you're not learning, and using that data as input for the future, why bother?
Lack of Customer Validation: A broken roadmap process often fails to validate assumptions and ideas with real customers. Without actively involving customers in the feedback loop, organizations risk building products that do not address their needs or solve their pain points effectively.
Absence of Agile Principles: A successful roadmap process embraces agile principles and methodologies. Organizations that adhere to rigid, waterfall-like approaches may struggle to adapt to changing market conditions and customer demands.
Poor Integration of User Experience (UX) Design: A broken roadmap process overlooks the significance of integrating UX design principles into product development. Ignoring UX considerations can lead to products that are difficult to use, resulting in poor adoption and customer dissatisfaction.
Lack of Cross-Functional Collaboration: Collaboration across different functions and teams is vital for a successful roadmap process. Siloed departments and a lack of open dialogue hinder the ability to align objectives, share insights, and leverage collective expertise.
Absence of Continuous Market Research: A flawed roadmap process neglects the importance of ongoing market research. Continuous market research enables organizations to anticipate shifts in the industry, identify new opportunities, and adapt the roadmap accordingly.
Lack of Alignment with Business Strategy: A broken roadmap process often loses sight of the broader business strategy. The roadmap should align with the organisation's overarching goals and objectives. (More on this and how connecting roadmaps with OKR’s facilitates business strategy alignment, leave a comment & vote below to let me know if this is interesting to you).
Failure to Balance Technical Debt and New Features: A broken roadmap process may neglect addressing technical debt, resulting in a product that becomes increasingly challenging to maintain and improve. This is a common complain that continuously surface between PM’s and their engineering counter parts, an experienced PM addresses this upfront and ensures tech debt is dealt with continuously in their sprints.
Lack of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and Metrics: A successful roadmap process incorporates relevant KPIs and metrics to measure progress and success. Without clear metrics, it becomes challenging to evaluate the effectiveness of the roadmap and make data-driven decisions.
Disregarding Lessons Learned from Past Projects: A flawed roadmap process ignores the valuable lessons learned from past projects. Reflecting on previous successes and failures helps refine future roadmap iterations.
Lack of Executive Sponsorship and Support: A broken roadmap process may suffer from a lack of executive sponsorship and support. Strong executive support is crucial for ensuring the roadmap's success and alignment with the organization's strategic direction.
Ignoring the Power of Reflection: A broken roadmap process neglects the importance of learning and reflection. Without analyzing the outcomes and lessons learned from previous roadmap cycles, organizations fail to capitalize on valuable insights that can inform future decision-making.
Lack of Iteration and Adaptation: A broken roadmap process often fails to incorporate iterative feedback loops and adaptability. Without regular checkpoints to assess progress, gather feedback, and make necessary adjustments, the roadmap becomes rigid and detached from evolving market dynamics and customer needs.
Absence of Clear Prioritization: A successful roadmap requires a well-defined prioritization framework. If there is a lack of clarity in prioritizing features and initiatives, it becomes challenging to allocate resources effectively and address the most critical needs of customers and the business.
Inadequate Collaboration and Communication: A broken roadmap process often stems from insufficient collaboration and communication between cross-functional teams. Siloed departments and a lack of open dialogue hinder the ability to align objectives, share insights, and leverage collective expertise.
Ignoring Market Research and Competitive Analysis: A flawed roadmap process overlooks the importance of conducting thorough market research and competitive analysis. Neglecting to assess market trends, customer preferences, and competitor offerings risks developing products that lack differentiation and fail to meet evolving market demands.
Absence of Data-Driven Decision Making: A successful roadmap process is rooted in data-driven decision making. Failing to leverage data and analytics to inform roadmap choices can lead to subjective decision-making, increased risk, and missed opportunities for innovation and improvement.
Lack of Regular Review and Alignment: A broken roadmap process often lacks regular review cycles and fails to ensure ongoing alignment with strategic objectives. Without periodic evaluations, it becomes challenging to assess progress, measure success, and ensure that the roadmap remains aligned with the evolving needs of the business.
Insufficient Resource Allocation and Capacity Planning: A flawed roadmap process may overlook the importance of resource allocation and capacity planning. Balancing the allocation of resources between new features and technical debt reduction is essential for long-term sustainability.
Disregarding Customer Feedback and User Insights: A successful roadmap process involves actively seeking and incorporating customer feedback and user insights throughout the product development lifecycle. Failing to engage with customers can result in products that miss the mark and fail to deliver the desired value to end-users.
Lack of Flexibility and Adaptation to Market Shifts: A broken roadmap process often lacks the flexibility to respond to unexpected market shifts and emerging opportunities. Incorporating mechanisms that allow the roadmap to pivot and adapt in response to changing circumstances is crucial for maintaining a competitive edge.
You’ve come to the end of this list, I’ve tried to gather most of the reasons why I’ve seen roadmaps fail, some of these points, based on the company and team size may be more or less important, this also may change depending on the maturity of the product, but I would certainly say a product manager needs to be aware of all of them.
By identifying and addressing the red flags of a broken roadmap process, organizations can pave the way for success, fostering innovation, collaboration, and customer-centricity. Embracing transparency, inclusivity, ongoing discovery, and a commitment to learning will help product managers and organizations chart a course toward building impactful products that truly resonate with their customers.