When Your Roadmap Happens To You
“Constantly reacting usually means you don’t have a plan.”
Too often, I see product teams building out an endless series of ad hoc ideas. This comes in a few forms:
Say yes, prioritize and deliver. They have an intake process to capture stakeholder ideas and customer requests, then prioritize these and work to implement as many as possible, as quickly as possible. There is always more to do, because without clearer criteria any idea is a good idea.
Go forward boldly. A founder, executive or other stakeholder wants to make a big bet. This is often a pivot, presented with bravado even though previous big bets didn’t succeed. This time is different. This sometimes goes with making a splash at a big launch event. Rinse and repeat.
The roadmap is happening to the product teams, rather than coming from them.
These are two extremes, but have the same result: burnout followed by attrition.
Heavy workload: any idea is worth considering and everything is urgent
Lack of control: any idea has to be considered from anyone, at any time
Lack of recognition: the team usually has delivered activity not progress, often without measurable outcomes or authorship
They also share a common cause: lack of a plan.
It is product leadership’s job to change this. This often falls on the head of product management, but equally can be championed and supported by leadership in design and engineering – ideally operating as a leadership triad.
This plan should span time horizons and levels of scale; it should define how the team will measure progress and have a mechanism for getting updated and extended:
Product: A multi-year vision describes an inspiring future state; a strategy describes how to get there; a roadmap indicates current priorities. The long term should inform the short term.
Organizational: Core pillars are defined globally, then translated into team charters and staffing to clarify division of labor. Every team member should know what they're accountable for.
Measurement: Each team should be able to evaluate feature results against launch goals and see whether the accumulated impact of iterations is moving their key outcome.
Planning: Visions and roadmaps should not be static. Update them on a regular cadence, and make room for major unexpected events.
That may sound daunting, especially for leaders who already feel underwater. But this is preventative work that makes everything else more sustainable.
“Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.”
If you want different results, you need to evolve your system.
Small changes can start to yield progress, build momentum, and compound over time:
Run a handful of structured customer interviews to clarify problems and inform solutions
Create a strawman product vision to align on key pillars for ongoing investment
Define key customer outcomes for each team to improve focus and evaluate launches consistently
Pick 1-2 themes per team for a short time period to demonstrate the value of focus
Break large releases into smaller iterations to build momentum and reduce risk
Make product intake episodic to create execution capacity and force real prioritization
None of these are huge investments. The best place to start is often an experiment with one or two of the above: try a small change, treat it like a product release, evaluate the results, and decide what to try next.
If this sounds like your team, I'd love to help. Reach out and let's talk about where to start.
