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10 red flags of a broken roadmap process
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10 red flags of a broken roadmap process

Andre Albuquerque
Mar 28, 2022
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10 red flags of a broken roadmap process
www.andrealbuquerque.com

Your product roadmapping process is likely broken. Probably 90% of all product roadmaps are. My own roadmap processes are often broken.

Here are 10 red flags of a broken roadmap process I am constantly on the look out for:

đŸš©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”.

đŸš©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.

đŸš©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.

đŸš©Stakeholders having to "lock themselves in a room" to prepare roadmap. If your stakeholders wait for roadmapping season to discuss their strategic needs, instead of having an ongoing conversations, you’re missing out on delivering value quicker.

đŸš©Founders/Leadership wanting a “special private session” to discuss roadmap for themselves. Pretty self-explanatory on why this is not ok.

đŸš©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.

đŸš©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”. 

đŸš©Roadmap showing features first (or worse, only showing features), instead of outcomes > problems > opportunities > solutions.

đŸš©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.

đŸš©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?

Not all successful products come from great roadmaps. But every bad product came from a bad roadmap.

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10 red flags of a broken roadmap process
www.andrealbuquerque.com
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