What problem(s) are you solving with your product roadmap?
Roadmaps are traditionally linear, date-bound artifacts rife with assumptions. Assumptions about everything from who will have the skills and capacity to build a certain item at a certain point in time, to where the market is heading and what our customers want.
What if, instead of thinking of roadmaps only on the micro, tactical level, we also thought of them as a strategic tool, a tool to identify assumptions and hypotheses, to assist us in generating a vision for our product both right now and well into the future?
To do that, we’d have to let go of the notion that we can accurately predict the future. Our world is disrupted on a daily basis, the best we can hope for at this stage is to plan for the disruption, to be more comfortable with the unknowns, and to think more broadly in terms of patterns and trends.
I am liking Amy Webb‘s “Futurists Framework for Strategic Planning” lately. It looks like an interesting way to view our market and product through the lens of the uncertainty of the VUCA world.
What have you tried to make your roadmaps more effective? How can you shift your organization away from a dogged focus on the short term, tactical work, to a more strategic focus on the broader implications of the disruption that is undoubtedly on the horizon for all of us?
Inspiration article: https://hbr.org/2019/07/how-to-do-strategic-planning-like-a-futurist
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