Product Roadmap Prioritisation
Getting the product roadmap prioritisation right is a common challenge. Which items should be addressed first? Which ones can be delayed? This article answers these questions and helps you effectively prioritise your product roadmap.
Before You Start Prioritising …
Before you order the roadmap items, double-check that you have a validated product strategy in place. You should be able to confidently say why users would want to use your product and why it is worthwhile for your company to invest in it. In other words, you should have valid answers to the following questions:
- Which user problem will the product solve, or which benefit will it provide?
- How will it create value for the business? For example, will the product directly generate revenue, help market and sell another product or service, reduce cost, or develop the brand?
If you haven’t nailed the answers, then do not continue the roadmapping effort. Instead, carry out the necessary product discovery and strategizing work. Otherwise, your roadmap may be built on false assumptions. Getting the prioritisation right will then be virtually impossible.
Create a Compelling Narrative
To prioritise the product roadmap, consider in which life cycle stage your product is. As long as it hasn’t reached maturity, a product has to constantly move forward: initially to get to launch, then to reach product-market fit, and finally to sustain growth.
At these life cycle stages, your product roadmap should tell a convincing story about the likely development of your product; it should describe the journey you want to take it on in order to create the desired value for the users and business. To get the prioritisation right, take the following steps:
- Determine how you can meet the user and business goals stated in your product strategy. What is the best way to achieve them? How can you break them down into smaller, intermediate goals?
- Order the newly created goals so that each one is a logical progression, a further step towards the overall user and business goals, considering any dependencies between the goals.
For a brand-new product, this might mean that you start with user acquisition followed by activation, retention, and finally revenue generation, depending on your product’s underlying business model. For a product in the growth stage, you might find that you first have to remove technical debt before you can enhance the user experience and increase conversion.
If there are items that were on the product roadmap prior to the prioritisation, then check if they help you reach any of the newly created goals. If that’s the case, then assign them to the appropriate objective. Otherwise, either discard the item or investigate if changing the goals to accommodate the items would be beneficial. A cost-benefit analysis might help you with this.
Whatever you do, make sure that your roadmap tells a cohesive, meaningful story that clearly communicates how the product will create value.
Read On …
To read the rest of this article and access the remaining tips, please head over to my website: https://www.romanpichler.com/blog/product-roadmap-prioritisation/
Learn More
You can learn more about product roadmaps by reading my book Strategize and attending my Product Strategy and Roadmap Workshop.
Source: https://www.romanpichler.com/blog/product-roadmap-prioritisation/
